
REEDOM AND PURPOSE 



An Interpretation of the Psychology of 
SPINOZA 



By 
JAMES H. DUNHAM 



THESIS 

Presented to the 

Faculty of the Graduate School 

of the 

University of Pennsylvania 

'IN : ,-■ 

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements 

• for the Degree of Ph^D. 



Published by 

PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW COMPANY 

As Philosophical Monograph, No. 3 

1916 



— — — — — 



r 



^MWa 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 

An Interpretation of the Psychology of 
SPINOZA 



By 
JAMES H. DUNHAM 



THESIS 

Presented to the 

Faculty of the Graduate School 

of THE 

University of Pennsylvania 

IN 

Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements 
for the Degree of Ph.D. 



Published by 
PSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW COMPANY 

As Philosophical Monograph, No. 3 
1916 



*'-•* 






Gift 

Che UnltersttJ 




PREFACE 

The following essay is an attempt to interpret Spinoza's ideas 
of human consciousness in terms of modern psychology. It is 
extremely hazardous to project the feelings and methods of one 
age into the mental habits of earlier thinkers. The difficulty is 
of a peculiar kind when we examine the shell of scholastic for- 
mulae from which the author never wholly released himself. 
Nevertheless, the consensus of opinion has given him a place 
second to none among the progenitors of the scientific study of 
mind. Indeed, he is held by some, and with good reason, to be 
the unwitting founder of the historic school known as Parallel- 
ism. Be this as it may, it is certain that no man before the rise 
of empirical methods understood as well as he the meaning and 
scope of psychic conation. The structural phenomena of the 
organism were hidden from his view, but their functional values, 
which we now subsume under the rubric of teleology, were 
grasped with an accuracy that astonishes the inquirer. 

We submit the results of our study not as a complete account 
of the Spinozistic philosophy — for the inquiry is limited to a 
particular field — but as a practical solution of a problem which 
has persistently vexed the reader of the Ethics. Freedom, in 
whatsoever manner described, reveals a network of unexplained 
difficulties. The mesh grows thicker and more tangled if we 
treat Spinoza's problem in the cavalier fashion usually accorded 
it. Either freedom vanishes altogether, or its terms become 
tantalisingly vague. The form of argument which we have 
adopted allows room for the scientific verification of material. 
Its virtue, if any, lies here. 

We cannot undertake to list the array of authorities con- 
sulted, — on the one side the direct expositors of the text, on the 
other the standard works on the meaning of consciousness. It 
is not invidious, however, to single out two books, which have 
measurably affected the framing of our conclusions, viz., Joa- 



PREFACE 

chim's A Study of the Ethics of Spinoza and Hobhouse's De- 
velopment and Purpose. 

One word of personal acknowledgment should be added. For 
the initial suggestion of subject and repeated counsels in its un- 
folding, the writer is indebted to Professor Edgar A. Singer, 
Jr., of the University of Pennsylvania. 

The references in the body of the essay are from the Ethics, 
except as otherwise noted, and are cited by book and proposition. 
When the page is named the reference is to the authoritative 
Latin text of VanVloten and Land. It will appear that the 
English translation by Elwees in the Bohn Library has been 
freely used, as being in most cases substantially correct. 

Philadelphia, 
January I, 191 6. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter I. The Problem of Servitude. I 

Chapter II. Purpose the Mark of Freedom 19 

Chapter III. The Quest of Character -. . 48 

Chapter IV. The Realization of Self. 

( 1 ) The Meaning of Selfhood 72 

Chapter V. The Realization of Self. 

(2) The Mode of Development 86 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/freedompurposeinOOdunh 



CHAPTER I 

THE PROBLEM OF SERVITUDE 

The philosophy of Spinoza is first of all a transcript of his 
own experience. He found himself confronted with a serious 
problem, and he set about solving it to the best of his ability. He 
was conscious of two facts, the inflexibility of the natural order, 
together with his own inevitable place therein, and a well defined 
sense of freedom. Could these two facts be reconciled? The 
method proposed has been variously appraised by succeeding 
thinkers. Some have scorned it; others have altered its terms, 
so as to bring it into agreement with their own views; a third 
group have enthusiastically accepted it as a new Gospel. But 
whatever be the critical attitude of his readers, for him it was 
sufficient, and for him it became a genuine confession of faith. 
Let us understand at the outset his idea of human servitude. 

I 

The world in which we live, viewed as extended substance, can 
only be conceived as one and indivisible. For if it could be di- 
vided as sense-perception avers, then each segment would or 
would not possess all the properties of substance. If it did, in- 
finity, e.g., could be predicated of each, and we should have an 
infinite number of infinite segments; if it did not, then the whole 
of substance having been divided into finite parts must surely 
lose its original character. Both alternatives, 'however, are 
absurd. 1 To prove the same thing from another angle, let us 
suppose that a particular segment is destroyed, the other parts 
remaining unchanged in position. Immediately a vacuum is 
created; but as this is abhorrent to nature, all its parts being 
obliged to seek a^ junction, we conclude that quantitative divi- 
sions are inconceivable. From this point of view nature is a 
continuum; and all objects, such as water, which the individuat- 

»I, 12. 



2 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

ing eye distinguishes as separate, are only modal variations, un- 
dulations on the unbroken sea, by means of which fundamental 
unity is expressed. 2 

But it is extremely difficult for the mind to grasp the idea of 
unqualified substance, inured as it is to the presence and activity 
of individuals. Let us approach the case from the opposite di- 
rection. We deal at once with simple bodies, exhibiting the most 
primary properties, viz., rest and motion. These may be com- 
pounded with one another, the aggregate maintaining a due rela- 
tion in its parts, even though the modes of motion be changed. 
If now we advance another step and combine compound indi- 
viduals, the product will include a great variety of possible 
modifications, let us say organic reactions, or orbital movements, 
without working any change in the new nature. By continuing 
this process to infinity, we at length reach the conception of the 
whole of nature, tot a fades mundi, an individual whose parts 
undergo an infinite and infinitely complex variety of changes, 
without endangering the unity of the whole. 3 Nature as thus 
conceived is not a dreary waste of substance, with nothing upon 
which the mind can seize; it is stocked with bodies of different 
degrees of "animation", that is, with different meanings as re- 
lated to the whole. 4 The upshot of this view is that the world 
cannot be conceived without its parts, 5 the smallest organ and 
the most fleeting idea having their appointed place in the uni- 
versal system, because they form the modes by which the attri- 
butes of God (or nature) are expressed in a fixed and definite 
manner. 6 

Given, then, a world whose continuity is not interrupted, but 
defined by its modal parts, we inquire next how the parts are 
related to one another. That relationship is causal. Everything 
that exists, exists either through itself or something else. 7 If 
it exist through something else, it will be the effect of a cause. 8 
Thus, a body at rest cannot supply its own impulse to motion ; it 

•I, 15, Scholium (— Sch.). "I, 25, Corollary (=C.). 

3 II, Lem. 7, Sch. 7 1, Ax. i. 

*II, 13, Sch. 8 I, Ax. iii. 
6 IV, 2. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 3 

must be moved by another body. Nor can a body in motion come 
to rest without the interposition of a second body. 9 In measur- 
ing the exact amount of work done we must take account of the 
texture of bodies in contact, hard, soft, or fluid. If the im- 
pinging body fails to move a body at rest, the effect of the mo- 
tion is measured by the recoil of the first object, the path of the 
subsequent motion being determined by the angle of incidence. 10 
Again, the constitution of compound bodies is a more intricate 
application of the same principle. For the constituent parts are 
determined to their relative positions by the "compulsion" of 
other bodies and their reciprocal motions preserve a fixed ratio 
among themselves. 11 

If now we examine the world as a whole, we find the un- 
deviating dependence of one individual upon another. Every 
thing is determined to exist or to act by another thing determined 
in the same way, in a regress that goes to infinity. 12 Take an 
example. A stone is dislodged from its place 1 on the roof, and 
falls to the ground, killing a passing pedestrian. The cause of 
the event was a tempestuous wind that came in from the sea. 
The wind was raised by the agitation of the sea on the preceding 
day. The agitation of the waves was produced by a definite 
cause, a mechanical series thus beginning which cannot be closed 
until its every member has been ascertained. But inasmuch as 
the number of links in the chain is infinite, we can never reach 
the ultimate cause of a particular act, and must simply say that 
all things which are, are in God (or nature) and so depend on 
Him; that without Him they can neither be nor be conceived. 
We do not thereby give up the pursuit of a mechanical ideal as 
an explanation of the world, and take refuge in the "sanctuary 
of ignorance", the will or purpose of God. Final causes cannot 
explain how a particular thing is determined in space and time. 
For in the first place the dogma reverses the actual order of 
events, taking the cause from its position of priority and making 
it the effect. It removes, also, the element of perfection from 
the world as immediately constituted and argues that perfection 

9 II, Lem. iii. " II, Lem. iii. Definition. 

10 Ibid., Ax. i, ii. 12 1, 28. 



4 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

can only be attained when purpose is realized. "If the immediate 
creations of God were made with a view to His attaining a cer- 
tain end, then the last things for which the first were made must 
be the most excellent of all". 13 

Mechanism on the other hand insists that everything is de- 
termined to existence, and to a particular state of existence by 
God, that is, by the laws of nature. It affirms that a definite 
effect always follows a definite cause, the essence in each being 
the same, 14 that the only way to estimate the power of a cause is 
to compare the essential natures of the affecting and affected 
bodies. 15 Thus, if man be the effect, we must look for the cause 
not in the lifeless stone, but in the germinating seed. If the 
nature of the tree be the cause, we must look for the effect not in 
articulate sounds, such as men utter, but in umbrageous foliage 
or luscious fruit. 16 Moreover, the principle of causality concerns 
not only the nature of the bodies, but their numerical status. 
To account for a group of similar individuals the determination 
of the essence, e.g., man, is not enough; we must also determine 
why there is a prescribed number of them. Let us posit twenty 
men, existing simultaneously and without mutual relationship. 
They possess the same properties and can be understood by the 
same formulas. But the definition of finite things does not in- 
volve existence; 17 the nature of man does not require that there 
should be twenty units of the class at the same time. Hence, we 
are forced to seek a causal nexus for each one in turn, in order 
to understand why he exists. 1S In other words, mechanism lays 
its grip upon every element in nature, forces it into an infinite 
regress of causes, and sets upon it the inerasable mark of neces- 
sity. 19 There is nothing contingent in the wide spaces of the 
universe ; nothing, that is to say, which is dependent on the oper- 
ation of causes whose entrance into the sphere of influence we 
cannot positively determine. 20 

Still another fact confronts us; the rule of causality can not 
be broken. When a body has been endowed with certain prop- 



I, App. 


19 1, 8, Sch. ii. 


19 1, 29. 


I, Def. 4. 


" I, 24. 


20 1, 33, Sch. i. 


V, Ax. ii. 


1S I, 8, Sch. 





FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 5 

erties, and conditioned to act in a certain way, it can never dis- 
avow its condition; it can never act in a different fashion. 21 The 
most conspicuous interruption to the natural order is alleged to 
have occurred in the miracles of religion. They have woven 
themselves so intimately into the faith of the masses and are so 
manifestly the instruments of priestcraft for cementing its 
authority, that any one who attempts to examine them as natural 
phenomena, links in the causal chain, is branded as an impious 
heretic. Nevertheless we are warranted in inquiring into their 
character, proceeding on the assumption that the order of nature 
is immutable, as the being of God. 22 It will then appear that a 
miracle has no meaning, except in relation to the opinion of men. 
For it reflects not an activity in the mechanical world, but the 
limits of human knowledge. It is an event whose cause cannot 
be explained by those principles which natural reason has de- 
duced from observed phenomena. In many of the recorded mir- 
acles an uncritical age declined to institute a search into causes, 
a search which would doubtless have removed once and for all 
the unusual character of the event. The necessity of mechanism 
remains unimpaired. 23 

From a different point of view the application of this rule is 
denied. Men allege there is a break in the observed order. Sen- 
sations pressing thick and fast upon consciousness give us the 
impression of a confused, unarticulated mass. They do not 
conform to the sequence and order with which we have hedged 
natural phenomena. Disharmonies in sights and sounds, fetid, 
decomposing matter, bitterness or insipidity in taste, disease, in- 
equalities in social condition, — these are to us evidences of an 
unbalanced scheme of nature ; we are wont to charge it up against 
the inadequacy of the governing rule, forgetting that our "order" 
is simply a synthesis of the sensuous manifold, a concept of the 
understanding. In nature there is no "order", there is nothing 
but irresistible law. 24 Everything is determined to act in a par- 
ticular way, and in that way it must act. More than that, it is 
the only way in which it could act; that is to say, the world in 

21 1, 27. 23 Trac. Theol. Pol. I, 446. 

22 1, App. M I, App. 



6 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

which we live, and all its constituent parts, could have assumed 
no other form, developed no other causal series, than that which 
science reveals. The argument adduced by Spinoza to prove 
this point is strictly scholastic; you could not make a new nature 
without making a new substance, which would mean the con- 
structing of two infinities, an absurd proposition. But there is 
an empirical basis for his contention ; for, granting the physicist's 
principle, the conservation of energy, we are assured that how- 
ever much you may alter the relations of individuals you cannot 
reduce the actual amount of force at work within the world. 
Hence, all speculation as to what might have happened is on the 
face of it inept. The fact remains inevitable and emphatic, — 
the rule of causality is universal. 

II 

To the rule as thus formulated the body of man does not pre- 
sent an exception. It follows in every detail the laws of physics 
and chemistry. Man comes into existence through the medium 
of a necessary cause, that is, by the action of another body, and 
is determined to his particular form and function by forces over 
which he has no control. 25 His corporeal constituents are pre- 
cisely the same as those which enter into the making of a purely 
mechanical body, e.g., a planet. Like it his organization is not 
simple, but a congeries of minute and infinitely diversified bodies. 
Like it, too, his component parts reveal the usual variety of 
texture, hard, soft, fluid. He is affected by the same impact of 
foreign bodies, while all the organs and functions within the 
compound sustain an undeviating relation to one another. 26 The 
vegetative system requires the introduction of bodies from with- 
out for its constant "regeneration" — a fact which apparently 
unique to organic structure may yet be paralleled by magnetic in- 
fluences in unorganized bodies. Again, the human body receives 
impressions through the sense-organs, in such a way that the 
impressions endure after the stimulus is removed, by virtue of 
the fact that the fluid parts of our body impinge on the softer 

25 1, 17, Sch. 2S Cf. II, Lem. vi. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 7 

parts of the same and register there an effect, undisturbed until 
a new reaction is set up. This transaction is subject to the com- 
mon calculus of chemistry. 

Man has also a reciprocating- power; he can "do work" on his 
neighbor; he can "arrange" external bodies in various ways, 
especially by bodily motion, or change of place. 27 It is there- 
fore true to say that man is conformed to nature in an almost 
infinite number of ways, 28 that he is inexorably a part of nature, 
and cannot undergo any changes save such as are determined by 
the laws of physical activity, his own body as well as outside 
forces being examined ; 29 and that his every act mirrors the gen- 
eral constitution of the world and not exclusively the properties 
which make him a man. 30 In this way he fulfills the universal 
axiom that there is in nature no individual thing which is not 
surpassed in intrinsic strength by another individual, and which 
consequently is liable to destruction by it. 31 The axiom is em- 
pirically verifiable, and in no case more clearly than in the life 
of man. Man thus becomes a member of the causal series, which 
grows ever more powerful in its regress. The slightest ex- 
perience proves to him that his own power is infinitely exceeded 
by the power of external causes. 

But the account of man which we have so far given has made 
no reference to intellect as the special endowment of our subject. 
This is the element which is thought to distinguish him from 
other objects in nature, even conscious animals. It must be his 
certificate of freedom, if he have any. We therefore ask, how 
mental processes arise and what relation they bear to body. The 
primary fact is, that the order and nexus of ideas is the same as 
the order and nexus of things. 32 For every individual in the 
world there is an idea in the mind of God, since he is both 
thought and extension; that is, everything has a "mind". 33 But 
man alone of all'modes is able to express his ideas in language; 
hence his experience must be studied in order to ascertain the 
relation between mind and body. Now the first element in con- 



27 II, Posts, i-vi. 


80 IV, 37, Sch. 


32 II, 7. 


28 IV, App. vi. 


81 IV, Ax. 


"II, 13, Sch. 


"IV, 4- 







8 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

sciousness, the fact which first makes us aware that there is such 
a thing as mind, is the idea of an existing object, viz., the 
body. 34 The relation between them is indestructible. The 
moment a reaction, even of the most rudimentary kind, takes 
place in body, the mind registers its image as an idea. Mental 
action corresponds point by point with physical changes; the 
concomitance is exact. 35 Hence, the finer the articulation of the 
organs of body, and the acuter the senses to receive and co- 
ordinate their perceptions, that is to say, the greater the reactive 
power of body, the more fitted will mind be to work the sensuous 
manifold into a conceptual system. In other words, percept and 
concept are inevitably joined; there is no distinction between 
them. 36 The mind is not a plastic surface, a tabula rasa, on 
which images are successively engraved. It is another aspect of 
body, just as body is another aspect of mind. What happens to 
one happens simultaneously to the other, whether the "happen- 
ing" be viewed from the standpoint of ideas or their objective 
equivalent. 37 

Now we know what happens to body, and from these data we 
can judge what happens to mind. When the body is affected by 
external forces, the impact of the affection is registered in con- 
sciousness. The mind, however, does not perceive the nature 
of the impinging body, except as it is mediated through the con- 
stitution of its own body. 3s Thus, Peter's idea of Paul will be 
different from Paul's idea of himself, inasmuch as the one passes 
through the sense-organs of the observer, while the other is the 
product of a man's experience with his own organic system. 
The modification of body determines the image in the mind. 39 
When, then, two or more sensations occur simultaneously in the 
mind, the return of one of them will induce a modification, 
kindred to that sustained when both were present. This is pos- 
sible because the body retains the impression of an external agent 
even after its withdrawal, and until such impression has been 
effaced by a new sensation. On this basis memory cannot be an 
originative act of the mind ; it is the sequence of images, caused 

34 II, ii. "I, 14. 3S II, 16, Cor. 

35 II, 12. S7 V, 1. 39 II, 17, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 9 

by corresponding reactions in the body. For example, the soldier 
sees the prints of the horses' hoofs in the sand and at once con- 
jures up the image of a horse, a horseman, and the tumult of 
battle; while a farmer observing the same tracks would think of 
the plow, the furrow, and the hard-working animal. In this way, 
too, objects which have no natural affinities are joined together; 
as when a Roman hearing the word pomum, would at once think 
of the fruit bearing that name, the two images having nothing 
in common except the fact that both had at the same moment 
produced modifications in the percipient's senses. 40 One con- 
clusion alone can be deduced from these considerations, viz., that 
the mind is framed to think in a particular way, by a definite 
cause, which in turn is subject to a like determination, until a 
causal series develops in the operation of mind, parallel to, and 
as rigorous as, that which governs the affections of body. 41 

But to many students of human nature such a conclusion is 
obnoxious. They cannot understand how the laws of physics or 
chemistry can be the sole and originating "causes of pictures, 
buildings, and all things of that kind, which are produced only 
by human act." They affirm that the body of man, unguided by 
the mind, is incapable of unfolding the genius, enshrined in a 
classic temple. We answer that no one has as yet explored the 
resources stored within the body's confines. The fineness of 
texture, the complexity of organization, far transcending the 
products of art, are such that they may of themselves account 
for many esthetic achievements, which we have hitherto ascribed 
to deliberate intent. Nor has anyone gained so complete a knowl- 
edge of the structure of organs, or of the bundle of nerves which 
now we call the motor-sensory system, as to explain' adequately 
their functional offices. There are many performances in sub- 
conscious life, e.g., somnambulism, which throw us into surprise 
when we waken, and which when we are awake we should not 
venture to repeat. Animal psychology discloses certain instincts, 
leading to action, which in sagacity quite excel the voluntary 
efforts of man. Again, it is averred that the body remains inert 
and passive, so long as the mind is in no condition to think. 

40 II, 1 8, Sch. 41 Cf. II, 48. 



io JAMES H. DUNHAM 

But we answer, the state of body has much to do with the capacity 
for mental exertion. If the body be sunken in sleep, the mind 
is torpid; if the body suffer from fatigue or disease, or if the 
nerve-centres be subject to some particular stimulation, the mind 
cannot adjust itself to think on a given theme. 42 These illus- 
trations are adduced to prove, not that body is superior to mind, 
but that mind and body are one and the same individual, con- 
ceived now under the aspect of thought, again under the aspect 
of extension. 43 There is no interaction ; the mind cannot change 
the functioning of bodily organs, nor can the body give to mind 
the power of thinking; they act with a united impulse. 44 

The relation of mind and body as thus sketched is diametrically 
opposed to that adopted by Descartes. He held the rules of 
physics to be inviolable until man is reached. The instincts of 
sentient creatures are mere automatisms, combinations of phys- 
ical and chemical elements. Man however is of a different fibre. 
He possesses thought and extension, soul and body. Descartes 
agreed with many less critical thinkers in "conceiving man to be 
situated in nature as a kingdom within a kingdom." The bearer 
of intelligence does not passively follow the natural order; he 
interrupts and often shatters it. To trace the emotions of body 
to their primary causes was one of the secure triumphs of this 
philosopher. But he did it only to assure to man an absolute 
dominion over them. Hence his question was, how the transit 
from soul to body, from thought to motion could be effected. 
Preestablished harmony, as afterwards worked out by Leibnitz, 
would be a poet's dream, not a scientific hypothesis. The single 
substance of Spinoza obliterated the agelong division, accepted 
by religion and philosophy as final. A solitary alternative re- 
mained to the exponent of Rationalism : man must break into 
the mechanism of nature, he must master his physical environ- 
ment. How shall he do it ? By translating volition into mechan- 
ical action. The pineal gland in the "midst of the brain" fur- 
nished the point of contact. All the diverse, agitations of animal 
spirits impinge upon it, and from it receive in turn the impulses 
which drive them back to the state of equilibrium. Probably in 

42 III, 2, Sch. ^II, 2i, Sch. 44 III, 2. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE n 

infancy this connecting gland dealt with a single thought, let us 
say the most rudimentary reaction; but in time it became as- 
sociated with the great complex of thought and motion, and at 
length stood out as the fulcrum by which a man could lift him- 
self above the murk and bondage of circumstance on to the level 
of independence. 45 

To Spinoza such a transgression of mechanical law was un- 
thinkable. Man is not a privileged being in a world of de- 
termined bodies. He may acquire a lordship over nature, if he 
will; but he can win it not by overriding her precepts, but by 
obeying everyone to the uttermost. The device proposed by 
Descartes was a childish invention, unworthy of a. mind which 
had deliberately shivered the idols of Scholastic occultism. For 
if the uniting gland be equally agitated by impinging passion and 
volitional decision, the one neutralizing the other, it can yield no 
assurance that decision will not be checked and perhaps de- 
stroyed through the excess of passion. Nor does this theory 
answer the objection that there is no common denominator be- 
tween idea and motion, and hence no basis for comparing their 
relative powers. For how shall I find out the strength of the 
mental assertion required to lift the arm in the act of felling 
an opponent, when my instrument of measure is practically un- 
known to me ? When however we understand that the emotions 
of body follow from the necessary order of nature, that they 
can be traced back to determinate causes, that they involve no 
defect in nature, such as is described by the terms pain and vice, 
but rather register a little known aspect of her perfection, then 
we shall not decline to exhibit them in geometrical fashion, as 
we do lines, planes and solids, believing that by such a survey 
we shall be driven to oppose and conquer the restraints which 
have been forced upon us. 46 

Ill 

Having accepted the thesis that man shares the causal rela- 
tions of mechanism, we proceed to inquire how they find ex- 
pression in his emotional life. His body, as we saw, comes into 

46 V, Pref. 46 III, Pref. 



12 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

being wholly without his connivance. Inasmuch as mutually 
destructive elements cannot operate within the same body, we 
must attribute to man as to other individuals the endeavor to 
preserve his own existence. This endeavor can be nothing else 
than the essence or constitutive nature with which he makes his 
entrance into the world. 47 Hence the Conatus is a determined 
quantum, an appetite governed solely by the laws of chemical 
reaction. It is a something which we cannot change. We can- 
not, for example, do injury to ourselves with a view to ultimate 
benefit. To hate an object, and sustain thereby a distinct loss 
of emotional vigor, expecting to attain later a degree of mental 
"''perfection" hitherto unknown, is a type of sacrifice utterly 
repugnant to natural law. 4S Moreover, the same impulse, even 
when associated with consciousness and called desire, receives 
not a shred more of self-initiating power than it formerly had. 
Desire is not an outreaching for a benison which we would make 
our own. We do not desire a thing because it is good ; a thing 
is good because we desire it ; that is, because the organic function 
responds most readily to the stimulus. Now the realisation of 
a good, or more strictly, the functioning of desire, brings with it 
an increase of the body's powers and a corresponding increase 
of the mind's capacity. The movement is purely reflexive; it 
springs from the properties of our nature. We could not be 
men if we did not pursue a conduct like this. Thus, the emotions 
of love and hate are not careful discriminations on the part of 
an agent, as many moralists contend. They are mental registra- 
tions of physical facts. The forces of body are enlarged or 
diminished, and the mind cultivates or shrinks from a conception 
of the same. 49 Hatred and envy do not in the first instance imply 
deliberate intent. They are impulses which record an automatic 
revolt against any interference with a man's comfort, or his 
right to live. Parents have often fed the fires of such emotion 
by inciting their children to virtue, precisely for the sake of 
eclipsing the prestige of a neighbor's family or neutralizing their 
efforts. But all the training born of ambition would have been 
fruitless and dead except for the tendency already implanted in 

47 III, 7. 48 HI, 44, Sch. *• III, 13, C. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 13 

the youthful nature. 50 Whatever be the emotion that struggles 
for utterance, we may be sure that it forges one new fetter upon 
hands already heavily loaded with the tokens of human en- 
slavement. 

We have nothing to do with the rise of emotion; we have as 
little to do with its development. This consideration accounts 
for the wide variation of types in a given society, a measurable 
difference here, an extraordinary contrast there. Whence comes 
such diversity? The answer is: Elemental passions depend 
altogether on the way a body receives its modifications through 
the medium of external forces. 51 That our emotional nature is 
stirred to activity in this way only, is the common testimony of 
observers. 52 Thus, the child is constrained to laugh or cry when 
similar phenomena are found in the behavior of its attendants, 53 
an imitative reaction which in later life develops into a determi- 
nate attempt to emulate the word, look or dress of one whom 
we love. 54 Again, the tremor of lip and the pallor of brow are 
traceable directly to a nervous shock administered by some 
foreign body of higher potency than ours. These are emotional 
experiences which every man involuntarily repeats; pieces of 
"fossilized intelligence" (Lamarck), not drafts on the mind, as 
the reservoir of thought. 55 Another group of emotions distin- 
guish one agent from another. These admit of a diversity of 
intellectual judgments; and yet these, too, are based upon the 
empirical fact that every man tends to react to given conditions 
in certain well defined ways. Thus, courage and fear are first 
of all physical phenomena; a man does not make himself brave 
or timid; he is that, by the tendency of his nature. r More than 
that; no man can form an opinion on a particular act involving 
hardihood, without revealing at the same time his own emotional 
synthesis. "I shall call a man intrepid when he makes light of 
an evil which I am disposed to fear; and if in addition I con- 
sider the fact that his desire of injuring his enemy and benefit- 
ing his friend is not restrained through fear of danger, I shall 
call him audacious." The value of my judgment depends on 

"III, 55, Sch. B2 III, 13, Sch. "Ill, 27. 

"Ill, 56. "Ill, 32, Sch. "Ill, 59, Sch. 



14 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

my personal idea of courage, and that can be appraised only in 
terms of the physical power which I myself feel in face of 
evils. 56 

Individual peculiarities, then, instead of guaranteeing inde- 
pendence, serve only to prove how deeply intrenched in private 
experience are the rigorous laws of organic life. We are subject 
to an external constraint which we can neither throw off nor 
reduce. We are forced to be whatever our sensory reactions 
make us; and they in turn are shaped by the stimulating bodies 
about them. We are a prey to passion. For, in last analysis, 
drunkenness and avarice are not merely changes in a particular 
body. The words imply correlatives. If a man be drunken, it is 
because he has been lured by the cup and has imbibed its con- 
tents. If a man is avaricious, it is because he has conceived the 
possibilities wrapped up in the possession of gold. "They pro- 
claim," says Spinoza, "the nature of each affection through the 
objects to which they sustain the most intimate (i.e. causal) 
relation." 57 In general, sympathy and antipathy, words intro- 
duced by certain authors to indicate an occult property in things, 
really describe our emotional life; we are victims of passivity, 
whether for good or for ill. Nature has driven her thongs into 
man's flesh and heart. 58 

The servitude of man is further strengthened by his vacillation 
in face of conflicting emotions. 59 The sensory nerves cannot 
always communicate the same steady vitalizing power; there 
must be alternations of uplift and depression. This situation, 
so familiar in purely organic experience, stands typical of the 
entire emotional career of man. Consider for example the per- 
son whose temperament is antithetical to our own, who yet 
strongly resembles in face and behavior a third person, counted 
among our dearest friends. In our mind two distinct and con- 
tradictory emotions are aroused, attraction and repulsion, love 
and hate. Two attitudes strive for ascendency, and we are un- 
able by untrammeled choice to adopt either. 60 The situation 

"III, si, Sch. "Ill, 41, C. 

67 III, 56, Sch. w III, 17. 

68 III, is, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 15 

finds a parallel in the sphere of imagination. The mind is simul- 
taneously affected by two images, because two several impressions 
concur in the sensory system. When one image returns the 
other is automatically called up. If now the first image be as- 
sociated on another occasion with a third object, its fresh ap- 
pearance will superinduce a conflict of expectations : will Y or Z 
follow X ? The percipient is incapable of rendering a decision. 61 
In the sphere of emotion the fluctuation arises not from the mere 
concurrence of sensations, but because the causes operate dif- 
ferently in producing the effects. In the case just cited, hatred 
is the result of a direct clash of antagonistic natures, while the 
feeling of love is engendered by the presence of another cause. 
Generally, however, both emotions may be incited by the same 
cause, by virtue of the extraordinary diversity of our sensory 
reactions. Furthermore, in the last analysis, contradictory de- 
sires will be found to be variations of the same emotion, as e.g., 
avarice and luxury of self-love; the one expressing greediness 
for personal gain, the other lavish expenditure for personal 
gratification. 62 

IV 

Such is the situation which meets every man, even the most 
advanced and experienced. What will be the outcome ? What 
shall determine the issue? The man himself by "decree of mind" 
cannot settle the case once for all. That is out of the question. 
The settlement takes place by a change in tone of one or both of 
the contrary passions. 63 A new "state of mind" then exists. 
Thus, when hunger has been appeased by food, the digestive 
organs are no longer in the same condition of susceptibility. 
What appealed strongly before, now palls on the taste. We could 
not if we tried excite the sharp appetite which a moment ago 
craved for satisfaction. 64 But such a quick adjustment is not 
always to be expected. There are certain conditions which na- 
ture imposes, and which she insists should be met. The whim 
or alleged volition of the agent has no part in effecting the 

n II, 44, Sch. ra V, 1. 

IV, Def. v. •* III, 59, Sch. 



16 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

change. Emotions with the stimulating cause present exceed in 
strength emotions whose cause has disappeared. Emotions re- 
specting future objects are fainter in proportion to the remote- 
ness of attainment. Emotions conceived to be necessary make 
a far deeper impression on the mind than those which are con- 
tingent on unknown circumstances. 65 An intelligent grasp of 
the principles of good and evil cannot of itself overcome the 
effect of impulsive desire. We may be thoroughly convinced of 
the advisability of a certain course, we may have carefully esti- 
mated its ethical advantages, we may have worked up a genuine 
enthusiasm for its virtuous possibilities; but when a sudden im- 
pulse, yielding immediate results, fastens upon us, all the fervor 
of intention expires like a dying flame, and we are left with the 
dead ashes of a natural passion. 66 Indeed, it is true to say that 
the violence of the conflict exhausts a man's power of activity, 
and confirms the word of Sacred Writ: "He that increaseth 
knowledge, increaseth sorrow." Thus our boasted freedom turns 
out to be a hidden chain, binding us with links of steel back to 
the tyranny of unrationalized appetite. 67 Appetite, sensation, 
stimulus, fetters of sense, signs of bondage, from these we shall 
struggle in vain to win release. 

Having this convincing array of facts before us, we wonder 
how men will venture to affirm their independence. The paradox 
arrests attention. It is not a sporadic challenge, here and there. 
It is the judgment of many dispassionate observers. How can 
we dispel the illusion ? We might compare man to a flying stone, 
which has been set in motion by an external force. If it be- 
comes conscious during transit, it would regard itself as free in 
determining its direction and would think of the impulse which 
carries it along as the product of its own action. 68 This parable 
suggests two things; first, a definition of the will, and next a 
discovery of the actual cause of mental exertion. The will is 
not, as Cartesians hold, a separate faculty, by which a man exe- 
cutes his ideas. It is the same as intellect, composed of conscious 
units, each one of which answers to a particular change in the 

65 IV, 9, 10, ii. e 'IV, 17, Sch. 

M IV, 16. es Epis. 62. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 17 

organic structure. If a mind cannot perceive a thing, it cannot 
will it. That which we call will is the sum of volitions, nothing 
more. 69 Yet it is a convenient term under which to group de- 
terminate acts, in the same way that we classify certain indi- 
viduals under the term man, or abstract a common quality, 
lapidify, from several particular stones. Now the common prop- 
erty in volitions, the residual fact in all exertions of mind, is 
consciousness; it is this fact which awards to us a constructive 
part in the making of conduct. For instance, the impulses of 
childhood, desire for food, flashes of temper, instinct to run from 
danger, the maudlin behavior of an intoxicated man, the delirium 
of the fevered patient, the inconsequential loquacity of gossiping 
women, are thought by their subjects to be free decisions of will, 
just because they are conscious of a change in sensation. As a 
matter of fact, such activities express no freedom whatsoever; 
they register only the functioning of physical appetites. Trace 
the volition to its source and we see how helpless the agent is to 
hew his own way. The man who is caught in the cross-currents 
of incompatible impulses yields to uncertainty and doubt and 
cannot conceive a moral policy steady enough to steer him to 
safety. The mari with no commanding emotion, no love, no 
hate, no ambition, no honor, — an anemic and undefined complex 
of sensations, — will be the buffet of circumstances, a prey to 
every inconsiderable fancy that meets his eye. Each man is 
conscious of his subjective states; he cannot make a single one 
of them permanent by a free decision of mind. 70 

Hence, volition as an originative power is a delusion. As well 
hold that we can by act of will recover to conscious thought the 
name or fact which has dropped into the abysm of forgetfulness 
— as well maintain that the thrilling events of the dreamworld 
are acts of deliberate intent, as suppose that the most refined 
hypothesis of the philosopher is palpitant with any other energy 
than that which courses through the arteries of nature. The 
laws of thought are- the same as the laws of matter; they belong 
to the same substance. 71 To suspend judgment is to disrupt the 
order of ideas, an impossible procedure. Judgment cannot be 

•II, 49, C. "Ill, 2, Sch. "II, 36. 



i8 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

suspended, for the attempt to do so is itself a judgment, and the 
sequence of thought is inviolably preserved. Nor can a man 
exercise the power of contrary choice, that is, decide upon a 
thing in contravention of all prior motives; for such an act 
would have no constitutive cause, would be a spar cast upon an 
uncharted sea, with its origin a mysterious blank. 72 "Where- 
fore," says the author, "these decisions of mind arise in con- 
sciousness by the same necessity as the images of things which 
exist in the phenomenal world. Hence, those who believe that 
they speak, or keep silent, or perform any action by the free 
election of mind, do but dream with their eyes open." 73 

By this definition of will, too, we understand how error takes 
hold upon the mind of man. For error is not a real fact, but 
a privation of knowledge. Thus, we conceive the sun to be 
about two hundred feet from the surface of the earth. If we 
decline to test our sensuous experience by the principles of 
scientific inquiry, then, it may be said, we acquiesce in what is 
false. For knowledge unverified by true standards cannot be 
certain ; we may have no doubts as to its correctness ; but we can 
never affirm its universal validity. In the case mentioned, an- 
other man might estimate the distance to be three hundred feet, 
because the rays of the sun were less potent to his senses. But 
when knowledge is sure, when we have ascertained by exact 
computation the relation of the sun to its planets, then error is 
eliminated ; and private acceptance of the fact counts for nothing 
in establishing its validity. 74 The lesson which this experience 
teaches is that much of man's vaunted knowledge is derived from 
the falsifying impressions of the body. We are driven into 
ignorance by the involuntary reactions of sense-organs. Intel- 
lectual judgments as well as reflex actions proclaim the depth 
of our captivity. 

72 II, 49, Sch. "HI, 2, Sch. 7 *II. 49. Sch. 



CHAPTER II 

PURPOSE THE MARK OF FREEDOM 

The case is now closed, and a unanimous verdict is rendered 
on the basis of convincing- testimony. Man is the bondman of 
nature. He dwells in a world whose every atom is immersed in 
an inflexible causal series. His ideas are governed in origin and 
development by a necessary coordination of mind. His emo- 
tions are aroused, shaped and swayed by rigid contact with ex- 
ternal bodies. The hypothesis that he can change his behavior 
or environment at will is a fatuous mistake, due to ignorance. 
Yet in face of such cumulative evidence confirming the enslave- 
ment of man, Spinoza hears thrilling through his being the note 
of freedom. He beholds his body weighted with the chains of 
matter; but he is not satisfied. His soul is struggling with a 
mighty hope. Can it be released ? Can the fact of servitude so 
rigorously enforced be offset by another fact, which reflects the 
rule of freedom? This is the problem. He is unhesitating in 
its solution. Man is in part free, in part not free. To demon- 
strate man's right to freedom is tlte business of the Ethics. Is 
the proof conclusive ? Various opinions have been handed down. 
We select two historic criticisms, one denying freedom utterly, 
the other granting a limited kind to human nature, as he de- 
fines it. 

Jacobi denies that rational freedom can be found in Spinoza's 
treatment of man. 1 The structure of the self, he avers, is 
strictly mechanical; its one and only duty being to preserve the 
power of existence. The desire stirring in man is typical; it 
knows no genus, species or sex. Yet it is individualized in the 
conscious self, and being endowed with intelligence appears to 
act by volitional intent. It is, however, subject to exact de- 
termination by physical causes, both in its organic and ideational 

1 Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza. Werke; 4. Band, erste Abt. ; S. 17, u. fg. 
Leipzig. 1819. 



20 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

forms. The conatus alone explains the personal feeling which 
organizes reflective thought and irrational impulses into a co- 
herent whole. Hence the genius of Newton can be reduced to 
the terms of organic reaction. The practical life of man is in 
like manner shaped by its control. If constituent desires con- 
flict, they will eventually be harmonized by the action of the 
same basic endeavor. The result will be a more perfect type 
of character, that is, one more highly developed; for there is 
nothing intrinsically bad in nature. Being necessary, nature 
must be the best. So what man secures for himself must be the 
best. His very assumption of freedom is proof of his integration 
into the common order of mechanism, and springs from a sub- 
jective interest in his own condition; just as we might watch a 
valuable plant unfolding, knowing that we could assist it only 
by giving its chemical formulas the best field in which to work 
out their applications. Freedom like this is nil. 

One special point in the doctrine is cordially condemned, viz., 
the exclusion of Liberty of Indifference, or the power of con- 
trary choice. There are three possible attitudes towards moral 
ability : physical necessity, the operation of the machine ; moral 
necessity, the choice of the best; unrestrained freedom of the 
will. The first only is agreeable with Spinoza's premises. The 
second resolves itself into the first; the third is explicitly denied. 
Will is a succession of mental acts, each one of which is duly 
caused by antecedent conditions. It cannot therefore exercise 
the power of choosing a course when different paths are open. 
In fact, the mind is confronted with an alternative. The privi- 
lege of rejecting every proposed motive and pursuing an inde- 
pendent course, is excluded by the nature of man. The only 
power possible in human life is the play of appetite, which is 
another aspect of mechanical force, and the freedom felt in the 
exertion of power, instead of being self -originated, is simply 
the obverse of necessity. 

Another and quite different judgment is pronounced by a 
commentator like Kuno Fischer. 2 Freedom, he says, as defined 
by Spinoza is a real experience; but freedom in such a system 

2 Geschichte der neueren Philosophic, Bd. II, S. 415 u.s.f. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 21 

has nothing to do with the framing of conduct. It is not an 
ethical fact; it is a predicate of intelligence. To be free we must 
endeavor to fashion clear and distinct ideas of all emotions ; and 
since ideas are the organ of mind, we can realize freedom only 
in knowledge. Now we know first of all our own body and the 
physical objects which touch it. But we only know that they 
exist; we cannot understand by organic reactions the infinitude 
of their parts and relations. The same thing is true of the 
mind; the single image, or the sum-total of consciousness, is 
very imperfectly apprehended. But we are prone to accept part- 
knowledge as authoritative ; hence we frame misleading concepts, 
like freedom, purpose, and generic notions. We can make our 
ideas clear and our knowledge adequate by tracing each image, 
each reaction, to its cause. By this method we perceive the rela- 
tion of each object to the "common order of nature" and find 
that ideas and things are one and the same, expressing eternal 
substance under different attributes. The result will be that men 
are no longer deceived by the representations of sense. Reason 
has universalized the individual, and eventually intuitive knowl- 
edge will open up the essence of all things, that is to say, the 
being of God. 

At this point the ethical implications of the system of knowl- 
edge begin to emerge. Emotion is the key to character. It is 
at first entirely passive, an organic fact. But it may become act- 
ive by being idealized, that is, by being understood in its rela- 
tion to the common order. Desire and volition belong to the 
sphere of reaction; they are marks of subjection until we find 
their cause, stamp them with reason, and lift them to a place of 
supremacy in mental experience. Clear ideas, following neces- 
sarily from our nature, constitute virtue and command the as- 
sent of will. They alone give freedom, for they alone register 
our growing independence of desires that are fed by sensuous 
experience. Hence, we must sharpen in thought the distinction 
between good and evil, falsity and truth. Moral perfection being 
the highest emotion is won by adequate knowledge. Men are 
deceived now; they fancy themselves free; they are in the bit- 
terest bondage. Let them perceive the order of nature and 



22 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

come into conceptual relations with the world-laws. Then the 
claims of sense are silenced, and reason, pointing- to virtue, 
guides their hesitating steps to perfect knowledge. The spirit 
of this imperative, not its form, says Fischer, is communicated 
by Spinoza's theory. For ethics, as taught by him, is not a 
categorical command, but a mathematical demonstration. It 
does not issue precepts, it conceives the laws of life. Hence, 
knowledge cannot be defined as a purpose, but as the analysis 
of man's essential nature. Hence, too, the attainment of knowl- 
edge will be the realization of his perfect freedom. 3 

The first of these interpretations places Spinoza in an un- 
enviable light before the eyes of history. He stands no longer 
as a figure to the rejected but as a dreamer so grossly deceived 
as to be an object of pity. At one moment he maintains with 
convincing detail the thesis : Man is not free ; the next, he an- 
nounces a program whose key note is : Man ought to be and 
is free. Does he mean by freedom the same thing in each case? 
If he does, the judgment of Jacobi is true; and the book which 
so many eager spirits have fed upon becomes a tissue of con- 
tradictions. If he does not, then we ask, What are the two 
senses in which we may use the word, one of which may be 
denied, the other asserted with perfect consistency? That man 
is free, as some fondly fancy, to change the course of nature 
or disregard her laws, — this is the sense which Spinoza ve- 
hemently denies. Man in this respect is not free. Is he also 
in some respect free? 

The second interpretation finds his freedom in the winning 
of clear ideas. The reflective part of man is free, the part 
by which he rises to the contemplation of the whole of nature. 
But the part which is free proves on this view to be so very 
small as well nigh to elude our quest, and so difficult to develop 
that it exerts no influence in the life of ordinary men, but be- 
longs if to any one to the intellectual saint. On the other hand 
the freedom which Spinoza means is not prohibitive in its terms. 
It is embodied in every, even the simplest purposeful act, and is 
exercised by man at every moment of his life. Every act is in 

1 Geschichte der neueren Philosophic Band II, S. 540. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 23 

part free, in part not free. It is not free, insofar as it is con- 
ceived as the outcome of the action of physico-chemical forces. 
It is free, when it can be clearly understood through the proper- 
ties of man's nature. 4 We may arrange such acts in a series in 
which the degree of freedom increases and which has for its 
limit the fascinating but baffling concept of an absolutely free 
soul. 5 Thus the development of human life includes, first, the 
recognition of primary or typical impulses, next the weaving of 
these into a systematic whole called character, and finally the 
conceiving of a Self which interprets its purpose and unity by 
the purpose and unity of the world. Our present duty is to 
ascertain how the purposes belonging to the type man afford a 
basis for freedom. 

I 
We begin by pointing out that the order of nature is not fully 
explained by the category of mechanism. That category answers 
the question, how a thing is done. If we ask how a body per- 
forms the actions which we assign to it, we must examine its 
structure, its material properties, the kind of force at work, 
molecular attraction, elasticity, chemical reaction and the like. 
The examination will show that one element depends upon an- 
other by rigid necessity ; that this result could never have been 
obtained apart from that combination of conditions. 6 Thus, to 
take a simple example, the seizure and assimilation of food is a 
serial relating of cause to effect. Every movement which grasps 
the prey and conveys it to the body can be estimated in terms 
of physical force. The digestive apparatus which is set going 
as soon as food is at hand, is a group of organs, extremely in- 
tricately appointed in some species, whose every reaction records 
a definite amount of power in the stimulus. So too, there are 
fixed formulas, to- which may be reduced all the chemical fluids 
which enter into the activity of the organ. Hence it is possible 
to calculate precisely how much work is done in changing an 
organism from the state of hunger to the satisfaction of an 
appeased appetite. 7 

4 III, Def. ii. • I, 28. 

■II, Def. vii. 7 Cf. Ill, 59, Sch. 



24 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

But our account so far has paid no heed to certain facts which 
do not answer the question, How. They are as essentially con- 
nected with the frame of the world as the others and must be 
duly explained if we are to leave no problem standing. These 
facts invite us to determine why a thing is done, to what end a 
given act tends. They do not ask how a thing is constructed, or 
under what laws or by what means it has attained its position. 
To set out the several structural stages by which the pinch of 
hunger is subdued, may be sufficient for the demands of physi- 
ology. The student of vital phenomena, however, believes his 
work only half done. Why the cells and tissues combine to 
form an organ which reacts to definite stimuli, is the problem 
before him. Mechanism does not yield an answer. It cannot 
yield any. The problem is not of structure, but of function. 
The same materials are under review, but they are differently ap- 
praised. Heretofore we asked how they operated; now we ask 
what they do. It is the idea, the mind, the conceptual being of 
a thing ( to tl yv elvai) , which is expressed in the new defini- 
tion. 8 On the level of intelligence, where man fashions his 
conduct to suit his needs, we have no hesitation in calling the 
idea teleological. 9 Closer reflection will convince us that every 
act, whether of impulse or reflection, has its inherent purpose. 
We may carry the test further and hold that the frame of the 
world bears the marks of purposive coordination, not in the 
sense that a governing Mind has conceived an end to which all 
nature is inexorably driven, 10 but in the sense that the several 
parts into which it is critically broken up cannot be understood 
save as contributing to the meaning of the whole. 11 

Everything, then, possesses an idea or "soul," and between 
idea and object, that is, between purpose and structural arrange- 
ment, there is a point-to-point correspondence. 12 To rank the 
category of teleology side by side and of equal authority with 
that of mechanism, is to offer an exhaustive explanation of all 
facts in the field of nature. Brute force is not the only vehicle 
of causality. It is found as a cause in planet and organism, in 

8 II, 7, Sch. "I, App. U II, 7, 13, Sch. 

9 IV, 24. U C7. I, is, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 25 

the speck of dust and the undeveloped germ. It is allgueltig, 
but it is not alleingueltig. 13 The force of a thing's essence, the 
purpose of its existence, exercises a causation just as valid and 
just as universal. 14 But in the organic world the teleological 
principle can be more readily identified than among purely physi- 
cal forces. Life, the peculiar mark of the organism, can not 
be seen, felt or weighed, and yet no organic body can be defined 
without it. Life is the idea of the thing called, say, man ; him- 
self certainly a compound of gases, liquids and solids, 15 a clus- 
ter of cells, that never deviate in action from the prescribed rules 
of chemistry; yet at the same time a ''force" which insists on 
viewing the structure as a whole. To say that an organism 
lives , is to read its constituents from the standpoint of their 
purpose. Since life belongs by definition to it, we are bound to 
regard purpose as a cause evincing the same efficacy that we find 
in the mechanical order. 16 

But it may be alleged that teleology is a concept of the ob- 
serving mind and has no real place in the course of nature ; that 
it is an epi phenomenon, imposed by us on familiar facts, but in- 
capable of exerting any influence on their adjustment. We study 
now the conscious body, for man, our particular subject, finds 
his purlieu here. If the objection implies that to be effective 
teleology must be a new material force ushered in to counteract 
mechanical forces already in operation, we grant it at once. 
Teleology has no power to frustrate the movements of mechan- 
ism. Nor, conversely, can physical laws interfere with the true 
application of purpose. They are different aspects of the same 
phenomena, viewed, as Spinoza says, now under the attribute of 
thought, and again under the attribute of extension. 17 If the 
objector conceives that teleology is designed to throw new light 
on the workings of mechanism, he misconstrues the doctrine. 
Purpose is not brought in to piece out an explanation which 
mechanical formulas cannot complete. It deals with factors in 
organic life which mechanism does not contemplate. Mechan- 

M Cossman. Die Elemente der empirischen Teleologie. 
14 II, 45, Sch. "Ill, 57, Sch. 

M II, Post. ii. "Ill, 2, Sch. 



26 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

ism, we say, considers the attachment of one term to its im- 
mediate antecedent. Teleology asks how the term or terms are 
related to the whole; that is to say, how they conspire to effect 
an end. Parts and whole, means and end are at base statements 
of the same thing. Thus, parts in a whole, when that whole is 
organic, cannot be merely quantities added together. Adding 
the number of organs and the weight of cellular tissues would 
never produce a total organism. Even when we reckon up the 
mechanical units of work which the combined parts could do, 
we are no nearer the goal. To assess the value of the parts, 
we must find what is common between them and the whole. 
Spinoza calls this conceiving an object adequately. 18 This can 
only mean that the action of the part is conditioned on the action 
of the organic whole. The particular act of an organ is not like 
the flight of a stone, which being projected by the hand comes to 
earth again and sustains no further connection with the force 
that gave the impulse. The organic act is inevitably construed 
in terms of the structure of the body in which it occurs. When 
the arm is raised and the fist clenched, and a violent expulsion of 
physical force made through the sensori-motor system, we con- 
strue the movement as perfectly harmonious with the frame and 
power of the body. 19 The parts have combined into a unity. 
They possess the common elements binding them to the organ- 
ism. The same effect may be demonstrated by negative proof. 
For suppose a certain reaction, e.g., for drink, were greatly 
heightened and threatened to become the controlling impulse in 
conduct. Its ascendancy would disturb the due proportion of 
power as between part and whole, and in damaging the whole 
would react upon itself to its own disadvantage, — an impossible 
condition, as we shall see. 20 

But the connection of part and whole goes even deeper than 
this. It is possible to conceive of a machine so subtly contrived 
and put together that its parts would contribute infallibly to the 
working of the whole. Such parts, successful as they are when 
together in realizing the purpose of the mechanism, are by 
themselves colorless bits. They do not body forth the composite 

18 II, 38. 19 IV, 59, Sch. » IV, 60. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 27 

meaning of the whole. Organic interaction is different. Every 
organ not only has properties in common with the organism; it 
is so constructed that we can find the motives of the body's action 
in the action of a part. 21 Thus, the sex-impulse is a mirror of 
the lust for life. For not only does it serve as the medium for 
the preservation of species; its exercise duly restrained inures 
also to the health of the organism, and in the case of man to 
his ethical uplift. 22 The same is true of every other organic 
reaction. Hence we have an infinitely varied and complex net- 
work of impulses, each one participating in the nature of the 
organism, or as Spinoza puts it, every desire being derived from 
the primary appetite which affirms the existence of the 
individual. 23 

The relation of means and end may be treated in the same way. 
An organ acts toward a defined end. Its function is determined 
by the result to be achieved. Hence, an organic act must be 
sharply distinguished from one simply mechanical. We must 
interpret it in terms of its effect, not of its cause. The most 
rudimentary impulse, viz., for food, stands over against the end 
subserved, the preservation of the body. Hunger and life are 
correlated facts ; they too go hand in hand. But how can an 
effect, as yet unaccomplished, mould the character of the cause? 
How can a future goal determine a present course of action? 
Have we not committed the fallacy of hysteron proteron, the 
effect before the cause, as the older teleology persistently did ? 24 
Are we not deliberately making volition an instrument for re- 
arranging the members of the mechanical series? We answer, 
It is precisely this last step that we have not taken, and cannot 
take. Every analysis that makes purpose a term in efficient 
causation is mistaken. The end we mean is not dramatically 
conceived as an object of quest; it is implied in the nature of 
the organism. There is a "good" which every impulse realizes, 
must realize potentially, if not in concrete effect; it is bound up 
with the processes s>l the body's life. 25 The tendency involved 
in a given impulse may or may not arrive at its goal. In many 

21 II, 16. »IV, 68, Sch.; cf. infra, pg. 1 16-7. 

23 III, 11, Sch. *I, App. "Ill, 9, Sch. 



2S JAMES H. DUNHAM 

cases the attempt at functioning is abortive. Means are not at 
hand of sufficient strength or precise quality to stimulate re- 
action. The "end" is never reached. 26 But such a lapse does 
not destroy the values of the function. They remain, in effect, 
persistent elements in organic experience. Torn tissue and 
deteriorated organ do not proclaim the failure of the teleologi- 
cal scheme; they cut still more clearly the issue between it and 
mechanism. For if a cleft appear in the physical series, we 
must either revise the data upon which induction was based, or 
confess that we have thus far missed the secrets of mechanical 
law. 27 On the other hand purpose, in order to support its char- 
acter, does not need to reach an objective goal. 

Purpose, then, evinces a tendency in which the nature of the 
end is mirrored. Spinoza adopts for his central term a word 
which signalizes this fact. He calls the individual a Conatus, 
an endeavor, a complex of related impulses which unite in a 
common end. 28 The business of man is to strive with all his 
powers to realize his appointed end as fully as possible; that is 
to say, develop to the best of his ability his particular organic 
impulses. Take the instinct of gregariousness, held in common 
with many members of lower species. Can we rightly call it a 
propension of matured humanity? Suspicion, hatred, warfare 
argue strongly for the opposite conclusion. Hence, satirists 
have praised the life of pastoral simplicity, or compared men to 
beasts, to the obvious disparagement of the former. But the 
facts of experience do not bear out the stricture. Whatever be 
the origin of the coalescing instinct,' — desire for warmth, ties of 
blood, protection to life and limb, a crude distribution of eco- 
nomic labors, — it is true that human beings cannot live per- 
manently apart without serious injury. Men need the clash and 
friction, the sympathy and help of their kind, both for individual 
growth and racial progress. 29 The instinct which works its way 
into the most refined type of government is, at the start, a 
natural impulse seeking outlet. It is a tendency that must be 
interpreted by reference to the end in view. Thus, it can never 

28 IV, 3. "Ill, 7. 

27 1, 29. » IV, 35, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 29 

be satisfied by contact with inarticulate animals. They belong to 
one order of reality, man to another. They may evince a kind 
of affection and elicit from us a genuine feeling of regard. 30 
But tendencies move only on horizontal lines. They are gauged 
by the nature of the organism in which they operate, such organ- 
ism being coincident with the end proposed. We are therefore 
brought back to the first principle of organic character, vis., that 
the part will inevitably reflect the properties of the whole, and 
vice versa. 31 But we get an advance in thought from a static to 
a dynamic point of view. We see now the continuous unfolding 
of the individual's powers. The conation, the push, the strong 
aggressive principle of organization in man, animal and plant, 
sharpens the division between facts which show purpose and 
facts which express the mechanical ideal. Purpose as a cause 
is conditioned in result by its own impulsive type. 

The world, then, to which man is introduced is two-faced. 
It looks out upon a scene throbbing with the activity of force. 
Man is under constraint. He is bound hand and foot to the 
wheel of law. His every act bespeaks the uniformity of nature, 
from whose dominion he cannot withdraw. The same world 
presents another view, not to contradict but to expound the first. 
Here man is free. He has not put off the garments of serfdom ; 
he has transfigured them with a new meaning. Cells and tissues 
and physical reactions are not the whole tale of his life. They 
could be of no value to him, could not constitute him a man, 
apart from an organizing principle. Chemical formulas do not 
include it; it is teleological. So conspicuous a fact we may not 
venture to neglect. Hence, we ask, How does purpose moving 
in conation insure freedom? Or rather, if purpose be the mark 
of freedom, what kind of freedom shall we get? It cannot be 
the kind of freedom which Jacobi invokes. That springs full- 
orbed from an unpurposed mind, a kind of mental vacuum. 
Freedom, says Spinoza, is generated from within. 32 Man, we 
know, is not free on the plane of sense-perception. He responds 
to stimulus, whether he will or no. But on the other hand can 
the unguided exertion of will yield freedom? Deeper still, can 

30 IV, 37, Sch. 31 II, 38, " II, 29, Sch. 



30 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

the mind ever give birth to thought without sufficient cause? 
Thinkers like Fichte have accepted a formal freedom, 33 which 
selects its point of departure. But on examination it turns out 
to be nothing but an ideal, standing at the end of a dialectic 
indefinitely continued. Real freedom has its direction deter- 
mined and moves within bounds; like the rushing river, whose 
definition prescribes a channel beyond whose limits it may not 
pass; like the triangle, whose interior angles must be equal to 
two right angles or it ceases to be triangular. 34 Hence, we are 
guilty of error if we set "necessary" and "free" over against one 
another. They are not contrary terms. For if they were, God 
would know himself freely, but not by necessity, — which would 
drive the wedge of chance into the divine nature. Pari passu, if 
a man wills to live and love, he acts by unpremeditated thrusty — 
a sort of spontaneous combustion of soul. The will is a property 
of the understanding, subject at all times to its laws. Freedom 
is not unleashed volition; freedom is determined. 35 

But determined by what? What is the thing which requires 
the interior angles to make a particular equation? What fact 
of body submits its several qualities to a searching test, with a 
view to ascertaining their relations? 36 We answer, The nature 
of the individual determines the field of freedom. An organism 
can do just that for which it is fitted by the structure and co- 
herence of its parts, and nothing more. Its grade of freedom 
corresponds to the type of purpose involved. To seek the kind 
of action belonging to an insect in the body of a horse is pal- 
pably absurd. 37 To interpret the mind of man by the data of 
animal psychology is to misjudge the office of purpose and hope- 
lessly confuse our ideas of freedom. To attribute to vegetable 
life the functions which only the highly intellectualized nature 
of man can exercise shows gross ignorance of the idea of cause. 38 
Yet while this is true, it is not the whole truth. There are cer- 
tain type-purposes common to all branches of the organic king- 
dom. Man is heir to these, and so are the oak, the lily, and the 

a Wissenschaf tslehre, 1801. 2. Teil, sect. 31. * II, 20, Sch. 

M Cf. II, 49, Demonstration (=Dem.) w IV, Pref . 

^Epis. 56. "I, 8, Sch. ii. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 31 

blade of grass. There are other conations which find a place 
only in conscious life. Man shares his treasures here with the 
amoeba, the insect and the dog. 39 There are still other purposes 
which are found in the type man, and these determine the grade 
of freedom peculiar to reason. But freedom does not wait for 
its sceptre until the highest grade is reached. It follows the 
line of purpose. For wherever purpose appears, at that point 
appears too the "power to begin by itself." 40 Thus, given the 
same conditions in either case, the reaction is set up when life is 
present ; when life is extinct there is no reaction. Hence we con- 
clude that freedom is not a predicate of reflective mind alone; 
but may be applied also to the simplest impulse of organic life; — 
which means that every emotion in the sphere of human conduct, 
whether elementary or refined, is ultimately a fit subject of ethi- 
cal valuation. 41 

II 

What are the type-purposes which man has in common with 
all organized beings ? To answer this question we must examine 
the field in which they are at work. Confining ourselves to the 
grade of consciousness, we discern in each body a certain equip- 
ment which it has had no part in producing. 42 This individual 
man, brought into existence by natural causes, 43 is a complex of 
appetites, each one being determined to its own activity by a 
calculable modification of its organ. 44 Life then is impulsive in 
the sense not only that it is acted upon, but that it acts. The 
organism is the seat of power. 45 But power is not merely a 
complex of mechanical forces moving as we conceive them to 
move in, e.g., an electric charge. Power here is coupled with 
the idea of purpose, an end to be pushed towards. Hence, physi- 
cal force emerging in bodily reaction is appetite or purpose at 
work. By a phenomenon which organization alone exhibits, 
beginning and end are joined. "That for the sake of which we 
do anything is desire." 46 If now the power of an organism be 

"III, 28. "Ill, 57, Sch. "Ill, Def. Emot. i. 

49 Kant, Kritik der Urtheilskraft, § 65. ^ III, 12. 

41 IV, App. xxx. "I, 17, Sch. -IV, Def. vii. 



32 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

appetite, it must be subject to variations in intensity, since every 
new approach to an object changes the attitude of the agent 
and sets up new reactions. The change in attitude is a readjust- 
ment of the relations of motion and rest within the body, 47 that 
is to say, in the sensori-motor system. It follows from the 
satisfaction of a definite appetite. 4S Thus, in the example al- 
ready cited, hunger is the impulse, and food the means for grat- 
ifying it. When food has entered the body and been assimilated, 
instantly an agreeable feeling is superinduced, and the body af- 
firms a new state of perfection. 49 When the emotion is not 
periodic, but a steady experience, we call it love; and the wish 
accompanying it is not, as some think, a deliberate aim con- 
ceived in the mind, but the contentment incident to the reaching 
of its end. 50 When we rise to the consideration of psychic 
states, we may compare the impressions made by images of 
things present and things past or future, and weigh their respec- 
tive pleasures, — being warned, however, that memory is apt to 
bring contrary images in its train, disturbing and perhaps pain- 
ing the mind. 51 These are samples of the increasing degree of 
gratification, parallel to the kind of purpose at work. The 
greater the scope of gratification, the greater the capacity for 
freedom. 

Impulse defines the nature of life and blocks out its stadium. 
But what is its content? Is it a single, comprehensive, sovereign 
impulse, a universal type-purpose, or is it broken into constitu- 
tive bits? "Everything," says Spinoza, "insofar as it is in it- 
self endeavors to persevere in its own being." 52 This is the first 
and fundamental truth: there is nothing prior to it. 53 The 
mechanical analogue of this truth lies in the fact that two forces, 
contrary to one another, e.g., fire and water, cannot coexist in 
the same body; 54 the teleological, lies in the definition of organ- 
ism, which includes a tendency at least ideally to reach the end. 55 
The actual lasting-time of the body cannot affect the application 
of the law. Just so soon as an infant draws its first breath, it has 



II, Lem. ii. 


50 III, Def. Emot. vi. 


63 IV, 22, C. 


Ill, ii, Sch. 


"Ill, i8, Sch. i. 


-Ill, 5- 


Ill, 59, Sch. 


62 III, 6. 


66 III, 7- 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 33 

affirmed the will to live. If we adopted the point of view of 
Schopenhauer, we might say that finite things, insofar as they 
express universal reality, cannot be destroyed. 56 Will, impulse, 
purpose are permanently real. Their embodiment in person or 
thing is subject to decay. Spinoza accepts the eternity of type- 
character, or essence, — "so careful of the type"; but type-charac- 
ter can no more be defeated or obscured, when residing in the 
individual, than when thought of as a logical principle. Thus, 
we cannot and will not lift a finger to compass our own death. 
The regimen laid upon us by entrance into the sphere of purpose 
forbids it. When a man takes his life, we argue that constraint 
was put upon him, — physical force, moral obligation as when 
Seneca died at the emperor's command, or mental rupture. He 
could not by voluntary consent defy and degrade the dominant 
type-impulse of human nature. 57 It is here that Spinoza parts 
company with Schopenhauer. The will to live cannot be disan- 
nulled, even in face of its crumbling tenements. For after all 
the only experience we have with the universal precept is in the 
body, our own individuality. To give up that for absorption in 
the world-will is unreal and impractical, and offers no room for 
the progressive apprehension of freedom. The man who knows 
himself to be free guides his course by the familiar maxim that 
discretion is the better part of valor. 58 

That the primary impulse holds the key to the meaning of an 
organism, is proved by the fact of its untimed duration. "The 
endeavor wherewith a thing endeavors to persevere in its being, 
involves not a definite but an indefinite time." 59 Life has no 
date. In this respect it differs from a term in the mechanical 
series. The swing of a celestial body about its orbit can be cal- 
culated to the fraction of a second; but who has ever reckoned 
with such precision the life-span of a man? "If we knew all 
the terms in the series, we could predict to the moment the event 
of death." The argument from ignorance is worth just what it 
says, and no morev It is here that the type-purpose yields a clear 

" I, 21. 5S IV, 69. 

67 IV, 20, Sch. 09 III, 8. 



34 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

guaranty of freedom. To follow a course that is unpredictable 
means that at some point, here or there, the agent may exert its 
"power to begin by itself." The clash with forces outside and 
foreign to the body's nature furnish the necessary occasions. 
They produce, if unchecked, a lowering of the bodily temper- 
ature. 60 This is pain. Pain could not exist if every reaction 
were explained by the needs of organic maintenance. And if 
pain, the crush of greater forces, did not exist, life would go on 
undiminished in power and must prove itself infinite. 61 The 
history of the world is directly against this hypothesis. Not only 
is every individual surpassed in power by another, organized 
matter included, but the actual status of any reactive capacity at 
a given moment is defined not by its intrinsic character, but by 
the value of the impressions made upon it from without. 62 Thus, 
the instinct of defense is affected by the degree of contiguity of 
the aggressor, on the principle that every emotion whose cause 
is apprehended as nearby, is stronger than if the cause is con- 
ceived as remote. 63 Even when the stimulus has only a resem- 
blance to, and is not identical with the sworn enemy, the feeling 
of resentment is awakened and drives the organism to remove 
the intruder from the field of influence. In man this same im- 
pulse becomes a resolute attempt to repay in kind an injury 
which has been undeservedly inflicted. 64 

Instances like these throw into sharp relief the individual's 
struggle to perpetuate itself against great odds, amid many de- 
feats, and facing eventual extermination. They assure us for 
one thing that alien forces, vigorous as they are, cannot put an 
end to organic initiative so long as life lasts. Such initiative is 
ingenious and diversified. The human body, for example, can 
determine the place of neighboring bodies and arrange them in 
a variety of ways. Every such arrangement receives a new 
definition. It is no longer read simply as a collocation of physi- 
cal elements. The mechanical ideal is undisturbed, but upon it 
a new term has been superimposed. Yonder house is a composite 
of materials and forces, obedient to fixed rules. Is that a full 

60 III, 13, Sch. e2 IV, 3, 5- "HI, 16, 28, 40, C. ii. 

61 IV, 4, Dem. "IV, 9- 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 35 

account? Is this structure one that has tumbled into place like 
a heap of rocks lying at the mountain's base ? No ; a new factor 
is added. We call it purpose. Now purpose is always connected 
with an organic system. A house, a nest, a honeycomb is tele- 
ological, because it springs from a system that has the power of 
adapting means to an end. The house can express the organic 
character of the builder, and nothing else. Hence, it is insuffi- 
cient to say we build our house as a place of residence, as though 
to conform our action to an extra-organic scheme. The builder 
conceives the "conveniences of household life," and finds germi- 
nating in his mind a desire to realize them in a house of his own. 
Translated into teleological terms, this means that the impulse of 
self-preservation drives us to mould the resources of nature into 
shapes agreeable to our end. 65 In short, the type-end is fixed, 
although the means vary in proportion to the reactive capacity 
or degree of freedom attained. The end being defined by the 
appetite belongs to the system ; it cannot be sought without. For 
if one tried to continue his existence for the sake of something 
else, he would destroy the organizing principle, leave his body a 
prey to conflicting stimuli and defeat the very purpose, hypo- 
thetically proposed, viz., maintenance of life for the sake of 
another. 66 

Again, the means adopted must be harmonious to the sys- 
tem whose end they are to subserve. Every system responds to 
its own kind of stimulus, and to no other. The habits of the ant 
are different from the habits of the bird ; hence, their homes are 
different, although the instinct governing the making of hill or 
nest is the same. It follows that any object which fails to set 
up reaction in a neighboring organism can be of no benefit to 
it. They do not agree. 67 Or, if a reaction is set up, but is ac- 
companied by a feeling of depression, the harmony of the sys- 
tem suffers impairment, temporarily at least. Thus, envy and 
jealousy lessen the power of body, by revealing our own inepti- 
tude in comparison^ with another's triumphs. The balance can 
only be redressed by misconstruing the actions of other men, or 
unduly magnifying our own. In either case, the harmony is 

"IV, Pref. M IV, 25. 6: IV, 31. 



36 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

of a shadowy sort and soon vanishes. 68 To insure exact adapta- 
tion of external objects to organizing purpose, we must fix upon 
those which contribute to organic growth. This is the one and 
sure test. The law upon which we proceed reads thus : "In 
proportion as a given body is more fitted than others for acting 
and being acted upon in many ways at the same time, in that 
proportion is its mind more fitted than others' to receive many 
simultaneous perceptions." 69 Growth, in other words, is the 
increasing capacity for receiving and correlating the impressions 
of the outside world. 

Now correlation demands a something to which impressions 
are necessarily related, — not a substratum in which sensuous 
qualities inhere, but a teleological principle explaining why per- 
ceptions fit into the movements of the system. For this reason 
growth cannot be measured by bulk, shape, movability or chemi- 
cal reaction. Otherwise a stone would possess the same correlat- 
ing power as the body of man. Those properties are common to 
all physical objects and do not offer a basis for comparison. 70 
To correlate perceptions is to add a term not included in the 
mechanical estimate, viz., the end in view. They must affirm the 
value of the conation, our power of activity. 71 If the functional 
discharge be below the threshold of consciousness, its purposive 
character is just as real as though we had deliberately begun, 
e.g., to breathe or digest our food. 72 If the action be purely re- 
flexive its correlative force is equally valid. Thus, we draw 
away the hand from a hot iron by a sudden exertion of muscular 
power which allows the mind no time to form a resolution. So 
intricate and far-reaching does the reflex become in highly organ- 
ized structures, that we imitate the sudden removal of another's 
hand, although we ourselves have felt no pain. The eye auto- 
matically correlates the motion, perhaps with previous exper- 
iences now crystallized into habit, perhaps with the type-impulse 
of repeating the "emotion" of another. 73 

Particular capacities for responding to external stimulus vary 
with different organisms. In one group the capacity is entirely 

ea III, ss, Sch. '°IV, 32, Sch. "Ill, Def. Emot. i. 

w II, 13, Sch. n III, 54. 7S III, Def. Emot. xxxiiL 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 37 

instinctive. The power to act appears to be full-grown at birth. 
At any rate the instinct, e.g., of a spider to weave his web is not 
better fitted to realize the end after a dozen exertions than at 
the start. 74 On the other hand the human species passes through 
perceptible changes from infancy to old age. The child is ex- 
tremely limited in the use of his type-impulses; bright color, 
motion, unusual sounds, certain tactual sensations like tickling 
fill his repertory. Time and practice, change of environment, 
acquired traits transform him into a being responsive to a myriad 
stimuli which are eventually conceived as making for a common 
purpose. 75 Potentially, we may say, in germ, man has his fac- 
ulties complete at birth. Actually, he takes many years to un- 
fold what ant and spider can exercise at once. Hence the mode 
of development becomes a matter of surpassing interest. 76 

How does the growth of sense-perception take place? The 
principle of association is the first instrument at hand. "If the 
mind," says Spinoza, "has been affected by two emotions at the 
same time, it will in the future when affected by one be also af- 
fected by the other." 77 A certain type-perception, e.g., of the 
eye, could never progress in efficiency, could never lead to true 
knowledge, if it consisted of a succession of unrelated images, 
set up as reactions to adjacent objects. To satisfy the purpose 
of the primitive appetite, the lust for life, perceptions of different 
sense-organs must be exactly and immediately correlated. For 
example, the hunger of the dog, the rabbit once tasted, the sight 
of similar prey on the succeeding day, the juxtaposition of the 
percepts of sight and taste, this is the law of association, which 
Spinoza lays at the foundation of his psychology. 78 The pro- 
gressive application of the law under ever more complex con- 
ditions constitutes the growth of an organism, and in the course 
of ages also the development of a species. 79 

Again, the principle of acquired traits is central to this scheme. 
"Anything can by accident [i.e., not necessarily included in the 

H Cf. Ill, 57, Sch. ,8 Cf. Hobhouse, Development and Purpose. 

76 V, 39, Sch. "Ill, 14. 

"IV, 38. 
"Ill, 14. 



3& JAMES H. DUNHAM 

impulse] be the cause of pleasure, pain and desire." 80 Not what 
a certain function does in its usual discharge but what it effects 
when a new stimulus acts upon it, is ofttimes the determining 
fact in organic life. It is thus that the house-dog is trained by 
successive correlations to follow the chase, and the hunting-dog 
no longer to react to the scent of the hare. 81 The polarizing of 
type-reactions into differentiating habits is the sure way of mark- 
ing the growth of a particular impulse. For one emotion may 
be fixed so deeply in the organic structure as to overcome all 
countervailing emotions 82 and even reproduce itself in the off- 
spring. Then a new line is cloven, the curve of progress is 
shaped. This successful organism has received and correlated 
at one time more sense-perceptions than its nearest neighbor. 83 
Still further: the principle of opposition plays an important 
part in developing the individual. Pain, depression, fatigue are 
bound to enter the scheme of life, since power is graded. But 
pain is contrary to the elemental conation and cannot be in- 
dolently harbored. Hence, the effort to remove it must be pro- 
portionate to the intensity of suffering. 84 The more desperate 
the body's plight the more determined will be the output of 
strength to rescue it or any part from dissolution. The curative 
and compensatory appliances of organic nature, e.g., growth of 
new skin, or the heightening of the sense of touch when the optic 
nerve has been destroyed, prove decisively how far it has gone 
from the mere mechanical control of forces. 85 Such a remark- 
able psychical correlation as is witnessed in the animal's endeavor 
to remove the instrument of pain from the presence of its young 
shows the possible extent of the principle. 86 Indeed, for all or- 
ganized creatures there can be no surcease of effort until equilib- 
rium be restored, the body exerting its type-reactions in face of 
every possible stimulus, the mind correlating every experience 
into a conscious whole. 87 We conclude that an organism whose 
fundamental tendency unfolds in a series of harmonious acts and 
habits is heir to a freedom none the less defined than that of the 
reflective mind of man. Whatever acts by purpose is free. 



80 III, 15. 


83 III, 56, Dem. 


86 Cf. Ill, 22. 


81 V, Pref . 


84 III, ii, Sch. 


87 IV, 45, Sch. 


82 IV, 6. 


"Ill, 37, Dem. 





FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 39 

III 

Thus far we have analyzed the principle of self-preservation. 
We have found that it expresses the nature of an organism, viz., 
the adaptation of means to end, that it accounts for the changes 
incident to growth, that it unifies all reactions, no matter from 
what stimulating causes, and organizes them into a system. 
We have seen, too, that apparently separate type-impulses, like 
resentment, association, imitation, are reducible to this. There 
remains another appetite universally at work, that of reproduc- 
tion, and this we must for a moment consider. 

The supreme test by which organism and mechanical con- 
trivance are distinguished has by some been set up here. 88 Can 
this bundle of physical properties perpetuate its kind? If it can, 
its teleological character is unquestionably demonstrated. Spin- 
oza recognizes the importance of this impulse, and argues that 
while the specific nature of living bodies is different, while we 
define a horse in other terms than those applied to man, insect 
or bird, the procreative instinct is the same, a power which all 
possess by virtue of their common organic heritage. 89 The 
point now to be determined is, whether the impulse is independ- 
ent of the will-to-be, — a competitor for equal rank in the affec- 
tions of the race; or whether it must be subsumed under the first 
as contributing to its realization. Spinoza, we do not hesitate 
to say, took the second view. The organism, insofar as it is 
active, can accept no stimulus save what tends to promote its 
lust for life. If the racial instinct entails disastrous conse- 
quences, as it frequently does, it is excluded as a key to the 
knowledge of its terms. To many this view, when applied to 
ethics, grafts the grossest kind of impiety and selfishness on the 
character of man. 90 Their mistake arises from equating the 
two impulses as -of primary and therefore competitive value. 
The source of all teleological values, Ethics included, is utility, — 
what will secure the individual welfare. Thus the functioning of 
the sex-impulse, as of others, is estimated in terms of pleasure. 

88 Cf. Kant, Urtheilskraft, § 80. M IV, 19, Sch. 

89 III, 57, Sch. 



40 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

Now pleasure is not simply an empirical fact; it is involved in 
the nature of the impulse. We endeavor to affirm concerning 
ourselves everything which we conceive to affect us favorably. 91 
The racial instinct carries with it an idea of gratification, a 
heightening of the bodily feeling. Hence, the organism seizes 
upon the object which promises to effect that end. 

At this point the acquisitive faculty lends its aid. The animal 
not only desires food, but takes steps to procure it. The child 
not only conceives an interest in what his neighbor has, but 
makes a bold effort to appropriate it. 92 The mature man seeks 
to acquire both the property and so to say the personality of his 
fellowmen. He does his best to make other men live according 
to his scheme of social order. 93 In no field is this instinct so 
inveterately urgent as in the relations of the sexes. The male 
desires his mate, not as in the reflective stage of human life for 
the propagation of the species, but solely for the nourishing of 
the particular organ, without whose proper satisfaction the 
equilibrium of the body could not be maintained. 94 Individual 
desires incidentally foster the interests of the race; but this is 
not their primary purpose. 

Does this account seem to reverse the natural order? Must 
we not rather think of a Welttrieb moving through the several 
strata of biologic history, an energy which this insect or that 
man did not create and could not refrain from objectifying? 
We answer, Purpose as defined by the reproductive impulse is 
present to us only in the individual. There is no Man, there is 
no Organic System, except as we find their properties at work in 
an infinite number of single bodies. 95 To know what an impulse 
is, we must know what it can do; and the theatre for every 
world-tendency is an organized body. In the organism, certainly 
of the truly conscious kind, reproduction is subordinate to self- 
preservation, the species to the man. Hence, we conclude that 
the nature of an organism is not changed by emphasizing its 
secondary instinct; and that it is still free to pursue the type of 
purpose embodied in its particular form. 

n III, 25. 8S III, 31, Sch. "II, 40, Sch. i. 

93 III, 32, Sch. 94 IV, App. 20, 27. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 41 

IV 

Freedom, we have seen, is confined within the structural limits 
prescribed at birth. But freedom must have degrees, inasmuch 
as conscious life is infinitely diversified. To what extent is the 
ant free, to what extent the horse? How does the freedom of 
these species fall short of that exercised by man? In general, 
what rule can we deduce for determining the increase of free 
acts ? Freedom, we reply, is in direct ratio to the mind's capacity 
for correlating perceptions. It goes without saying that the 
mature man possesses a freedom which the unweaned child does 
not know. Yet the human mind, even in its infancy, has within 
it certain "adequate" as well as "inadequate" ideas. An idea is 
adequate, when it reflects an exertion entirely appropriate to its 
body's powers, as, e.g., when it seeks for food or cries out in 
pain. Though purely reflexive, such acts are free. 96 We may 
then infer that the elementary reaction, if it and none other 
emerges, will be sufficient to classify its bearer as the first term 
in the teleological series. For that conation it must have, in 
order to come under the term "organic." From such a begin- 
ning the evolution of life proceeds by the multiplying and cross- 
ing of reactions till man is reached. We must not expect to 
find in Spinoza a scientific order such as modern biology has 
conceived. He recognized its general divisions, and distin- 
guished the psychical factor as the same in each. 97 The genetic 
relations of the several groups, their origin in a common an- 
cestor, especially the phenomenon of arrested development, were 
matters beyond the ken of his times. But whatever his deficiency 
in detail, he seized the cardinal principle of change, which is not 
deviation in shape or structural equipment, but a new way of 
reacting to a given stimulus. In brief, he writes a psychology, 
not a treatise on physiology. He does not analyze the complex 
forms of organic evolution; he asks how such evolution takes 
place in view of the end to be gained. Hence, when a new type- 
reaction appears, we know that the body has accommodated it- 
self in some new way to its environment. To that extent the 

86 III, 1. 9T III, 57, Sch. 



42 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

freedom increases, and by this means the series is to unfold step 
by step until a new and untried factor comes above the surface 
in the reflective mind of man. 98 

Every new type of response to environment carries with it, 
we may believe, a feeling of increased power. When the reac- 
tion is of such a character as to modify radically the structural 
life of the organism, an entirely new species is broken in. It is 
then that gratification attending functional discharge is most 
keenly felt. "When the mind contemplates itself and its own 
power of activity it experiences pleasure; and the pleasure is 
greater in proportion to the distinctness by which it conceives 
itself and its power." 99 It follows that type-reactions in a 
complex structure provoke a finer kind of gratification than 
those, say, of the purely vegetative organs. 

To project human feelings into the experience of the lower 
forms may be precarious; yet it is extremely suggestive. If we 
select two widely separate impulses, one common to man and 
Infusorian, the other common to man and mammal, e.g., dog, 
compare them in our own body, and project that experience into 
the parallel organisms, we might get a basis for judging the 
relative feelings. The satisfaction of hunger and the pleasure 
of associating images in mind, both effects of appetition, are 
cases in point. 100 The contrast is even more glaring when we 
take a single impulse and run out its forms on the different levels 
of consciousness. Thus, the endeavor to convey an "idea" to a 
neighbor, to "make ourselves understood," varies as to intensity 
of gratification with the order of mind affected. The dog barks, 
the ape gesticulates, man speaks. For man there is a real plea- 
sure in the functioning of the vocal organs. He gives it the 
best title in his lexicon, viz., freedom, not knowing that he is 
acting out a type-purpose of his kind. But his very self-com- 
placence goes to show how much more reactive value attaches to 
articulate speech than to shrug of shoulder or movement of 
hand. 101 These facts are summed up by Spinoza in a general 
rule: "The emotion of a given individual differs from that of 

98 Cf. V. Pref . ™ Cf. Ill, 2, Sch. 

w III, S3- M Ibid. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 43 

another only insofar as the nature of one differs from the nature 
of the other." 102 The pitch of progress and the degree of free- 
dom are determined by the number and complexity of the 
mechanisms set up in the cortical centres. But these in higher 
orders of life are so delicately framed and intricately interlaced 
as to make analysis impossible. We can only take the typical 
reactions, and judge the rest by them. 103 

We have spoken of correlating sense-perceptions, co-ordina- 
ting the elements of experience; just what does this mean? What 
is the principle by which the mind gives continuity to its images? 
We call it consciousness, the regarding of several things at once 
and the discriminating of their stimulating values. 104 To be 
conscious is not to add a new force to the assemblage of mech- 
anisms, guiding them to their proper coalescence. It is to ex- 
press their relations by a new term, hitherto called purpose, now 
called conscious purpose. With it as correlating principle, bodily 
actions operate together in a system; the organism acts in its 
own right. We may define consciousness as the idea of the 
mind, its distinctive essence, conceived as mode of thought, and 
not involving physical motion. 105 It tells us what the sensations 
mean as they are transmitted by organs of the body. It assesses 
the value of every reaction and ultimately of every stimulus. 
It leads us to reject this stimulus as repugnant to organic growth 
and accept that as in line with our needs. The finer the struc- 
tural apparatus, the more delicate will be its distinctions. The 
more varied the environment, the more diversified will be the 
sense-perceptions, and hence the more expert the work of con- 
sciousness in correlating them into a system. This integrating 
tendency in the march of evolution renders the organism less 
and less dependent on external stimuli, more and more compe- 
tent to live its own life. 106 But since body always requires the 
support of body, conscious independence can never be reached. 
The limit of the series can only be an Ideal. 107 Nevertheless, 
the emerging of consciousness on the level of human intellect 
introduces a new phase of correlation and makes possible a new 

142 III, 57- m H, 29, Sch. 106 II, 13, Sch. 

109 III, 59, Sch. 105 II, 2i, Sch. 107 IV, 18, Sch. 



44 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

degree of freedom. It remains for us to consider what addi- 
tional type-purposes enter into the definition of man. 

V 

The first of these is the forming of judgment, the setting of 
the concrete data of experience into relations. Every perceptual 
act is in a certain sense a judgment. It includes something 
more than an image framed "at the back of the eye or in the 
midst of the brain." Reality is asserted or denied. Or, to put 
it another way, perception fixes the object in relations of time 
and space. The mind has a tendency to effect such co-ordination ; 
it cannot be mind if deprived of that principle. 108 Nor can 
mind exist without the tendency to revive perceptual images 
on the reappearance of appropriate stimulus. We cannot act 
in the most casual way, e.g., speak a word, without remember- 
ing that we have done so. Bodily modifications guarantee that. 
Now, memory is a renewal of previous sensory judgments. 109 
Such judgments, however, being reflexive, deal with objects im- 
mediately before the mind, — objects to which the mind inevit- 
ably reacts, whether approved by antecedent experience or not. 
Intellectual judgments state a new term, discharge a new func- 
tion, viz., that of understanding. They make a synthesis of the 
sensuous manifold. The mind begins to think, and that is its 
highest office. 110 Intelligence as a type-purpose comes into clear 
light when we relate it to the conational efforts of man. For it 
is characteristic of Spinoza's philosophy that he does not stop 
with determining logical categories as such, but goes on to 
affirm their empirical values. Now the end of action is not 
defined in terms of impulse, but is dramatically set down as an 
idea to be aimed at. The intellect exercises a strict vigilance 
over the impulse life of men. It trains and directs the particu- 
lar appetites and restrains them from excess; not by playing 
one impulse off against another, — a process which must go on 
indefinitely, — but by representing an ideal purpose, a reflective 
choice. Thus the instinct of imitation, vigorous as we have 
seen in all organized bodies, may be checked by exposing the 

108 II, 48, Sch. 109 III, 2, Sch. ' ™IV, 28, Dem. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 45 

results of indiscriminately repeating the habits of another; — 
an antithesis between ends common to man and beast and the 
intellectual principle unique in man. 111 It is the precise differ- 
ence between a sensuous judgment: the hand strikes,' — and the 
judgment of the understanding: the hand strikes to hurt; the 
one an act expressing the body's nature, the other an act en- 
forcing an ideal end. 112 

It is in the functioning of intellect that ethical implications ap- 
pear. Physical appetites involve no difference in quality. They 
are always good. Whatever interferes with their free and nor- 
mal activity is bad. Since, however, we may experience serious 
damage by reacting to every passing stimulus, it is of great im- 
portance to men to have a "type-character" before the mind, a 
definite mould into which tendencies may be cast. The framing 
of a Type is proof-positive of man's advance beyond the pale of 
purely perceptual judgment. He can now plan, and every plan 
carries him away from the sphere of automatic reaction. 113 The 
end qua end may be native to him and his unspeaking neighbor. 
For instance, both are driven by self-preservative instinct to build 
dwellings and lay up in store for future needs. But intellect 
re-arranges surrounding material in a planful manner, which 
insect and rodent cannot imitate. It does not keep man's body 
from reacting differently to changed environment; it selects 
from stimulating forces those, e.g., which when naturally acting 
cause death, when ideally composed inure to his highest ad- 
vantage. We must be careful not to think of this synthetic 
principle as a new mechanical force moving amongst the nerve- 
tracts of the brain. It is not that ; it is rather a new reading of 
bodily modifications which have now reached an unprecedented 
grade of executive refinement. 114 But with such refinement 
emerges the capacity. for affirming, This way is better than that. 
That is to say, teleological values take their place in the reflective 
life of man. 

If now the environment be not hard, unfriendly matter, which 
only extremely high skill can conquer, but the flesh and blood 

1U IV, App. 30, 13. " S IV, Pref. 

^IV, 59,Sch. m IV, App. 7. 



46 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

of our own kind, intellect is alert to create values of a different 
sort. It devises an instrument for communication, language, and 
into it pours the wealth of conceptual judgment. 115 Man be- 
comes to man his most useful accessory. He can understand 
thought, and return in kind. Henceforward, intercourse is not 
on the basis of impulsive gesture, but of the progressive inter- 
change of ideas. Love or mutual appetition is no longer a static 
force; it passes into friendship, which is not content with gleam 
of eye or clasp of hand, or other automatic sign. It demands 
freedom of soul, one mind entering another. Interests now be- 
come common; men can desire and have the same thing, which 
however is not tangible, but the product of an idea, — justice, 
equity and harmony. And this is possible just because the mind 
is so constituted that it can conceive a term which does not 
answer to the empirical returns of sense. 116 

But mind must not only correlate perceptual impressions; it 
must define the laws by which they can be brought into synthe- 
sis. It must, in other words, make an examination of itself ; or 
as Spinoza puts it, it must separate emotions from the thought 
of an external cause and connect them with true, i.e., universally 
valid, ideas. 117 Thus, the conceptualizing tendency has two 
general forms : resemblance and continuity. Several figures 
pass before us and leave their impressions on the mind. By the 
law of intellect we are bound to note the points of similarity. 
Different observers are affected by different stimuli, — height, 
walking on two feet, explosive sounds called laughter, exchange 
of communications indicating reason. But whatever be the type- 
reaction induced, the percept gets permanent value solely from 
the fact that the mind puts two or more instances together and 
says, They are like. Every such judgment is an application of 
the constitutive principle of mind. 118 The second form may be 
illustrated in this way. The child sees a succession of figures 
for the first time: Peter in the morning, Paul at noon, and 
Simon in the evening. The next day, at the rising of the sun, 
he will think of Peter, Paul and Simon in order as parts of the 

**Cf. De Intel. Emend, pg. n. m V, 4, Sch. 

"•IV, App. 9, etc. U8 II, 40, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 47 

day's projected experience. Should one, however, say Simon, 
fail to appear, and James take his place, the third day will show 
a modified program, with Simon and James alternately occupy- 
ing the third point in the series. Perceptual association has ex- 
panded into the principle of continuity, which the mind forces 
upon the observer. Now because the mind can take two percepts 
and standing apart from their objects say within itself : "These 
are alike, these follow one another," eventually it sees itself as 
the judge of concepts, the subject over against object; it gets 
the idea of the consciousness or identity of self. Then the su- 
preme purpose of mind, viz., self-realization, comes into view, 
and man's proper freedom is assured. 119 
How can he reach the goal? 

118 IV, App. 4. 



CHAPTER III 

THE QUEST OF CHARACTER 

We have thus far examined the concept of purpose as em- 
bodying the freedom which we may claim for man in a world 
of mechanical law. Man is not free to break the bonds of physi- 
cal force. They gird him as closely as they do the motions of 
a planet. To act at all he must act within the sphere of body, 
which obeys inevitably the rules of exact determination. Never- 
theless, he is not like a bar of steel or flying meteor, subject 
only to the interpretation of mechanism. He is organic. His 
bodily parts combine into a unity. He is so constituted that his 
actions tend to a fixed end or result. In this respect he is on 
equal footing with all organized bodies, occupying the field of 
mechanism, but displaying certain properties which mechanism 
does not explain. Their common mark is purpose. Purpose 
in its typical form belongs to every creature which reacts to 
its environment; more restrictedly to those which possess the 
element of consciousness, or, as we should say, are equipped 
with a nervous system. Hence, the human species cannot assert 
here any primordial rights. The most general purpose, defined 
by Spinoza as the thing's essence, is its endeavor to persist in 
its own being. Annexed to this, and in the view of some of 
equal value, is the desire for the perpetuation of the species. 
Still other purposes developing from the first distinguish the 
steps of organic order, and define the degree of freedom. The 
highest of all type-purposes, viz., the powers of intellect, are 
found in man and guaranty to him the greatest range of freedom. 

The acts of man follow strictly from the appetites of body 
and the habits of mind. They constitute a class, being repeated 
by a multitude of individuals of the same nature. Thus, when 
the agent discharges any functional energy, e.g., when he reaches 
his hand in quest of food, when he shrinks from some object 
which threatens to limit or destroy his ability to survive, when 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 49 

he frames a concept and articulates it in speech, he is by that act 
obeying the mandate of his kind. But obedience to universal 
impulse, so far from branding him as a slave, really forms the 
first element in his freedom. Freedom consists at root in fulfill- 
ing the purpose of our nature. It is beside the point to complain 
that the channels of activity are charted for us ; that the lines of 
organic life are inexorably drawn. On the higher ranges of 
human experience we do not hesitate to say that the man is not 
free who degrades his physical desires to the uses of an animal 
existence. Conversely, it must appear that he who carries out 
the purpose embodied in the common course of nature, who per- 
forms such actions as are of primary importance in life and 
reflect his chiefest desire, will eo ipso exercise freedom, though 
it be as yet only of a generic kind. 



But purpose must be studied not alone as the expression of a 
type. We must seek out its values in the careers of individuals. 
Men do not conduct their business, perform their social duties, 
ponder on the deep things of philosophy, as though they were 
satisfying the impulses of the race. Race consciousness is the 
end, not the beginning of reflective thought. We act in the first 
instance always as individual persons. It is essential to under- 
stand what we mean by the term. 

Theoretically conceived, the individual is an abstracted part 
of the whole. It cannot exist as separate substance, as one of 
the factors into which matter is divided. The drop of water may 
appear to be distinct from other drops, from the flow of the river, 
the depth of ocean, or the unmeasured expanse of the atmos- 
phere. In reality it is extended substance, which the mind re- 
gards as individualized for its own critical purposes. 1 In the 
same way an organism sustains a partitive relation to the whole 
of nature. It exists as body, but in a modal, not real sense. It 
must be examined^ in the same way that we examine the lines, 
planes and solids of geometry, viz., as segments of extended 

1 1, 15, Sch. 



SO JAMES H. DUNHAM 

space. 2 Since we cannot comprehend infinite substance by itself, 
we must discover its meaning through the relations in which 
individuals stand to one another and the whole. 

Let us observe then that man is an individual in the world of 
extension, and that as such he is subject to reactive changes 
which are determined first by the nature of impinging bodies, 
and secondly by his own nature. 3 To fix upon an individual 
purpose we must meet both these conditions. This man, whom 
we now look upon, has his own environment and cannot disen- 
tangle his body from the network of its influence. Not a single 
sensory current passes through his system, of which he is the 
unconditioned cause. 4 To be individuated by the coordinates of 
time and place, far from setting him apart, serves rather to 
cement more firmly his position in the common order of nature. 
Thus, as we shall see, percepts given by nearby objects are in- 
definitely more vivid than when the cause of excitation is some- 
what removed. Impressions derived from contingent bodies, 
i.e., bodies dependent for action on secondary causes, are fainter 
than those instilled by necessary things. 5 If a man could with- 
draw himself from the toils of mechanism he might live his 
life without fear of decay or extinction. But this could only 
be done by giving him infinite power, or forcing nature to sub- 
serve his elemental impulse continually, — both of which are 
impossible. 6 So long as a man remains an individual in a 
universe of individuals he cannot escape the fate incident to his 
place. That he must maintain his place here, is deduced by 
Spinoza from the fact that nature as a whole cannot be con- 
ceived without her constitutive parts. 7 

The purpose of the man, whom we single out for study, will 
be in part determined by the milieu in which he finds himself. 
But stock, stone and man come impartially under this rule. 
Hence, there is a second condition. The body affected under- 
goes just such changes, and no others, as are compatible with 
its nature. Here again, the rule is universally valid. Stock, 
stone and man evince structural changes corresponding to the 



III, Pref. 


4 IV, 4. 


6 IV, 4. 


II, 16. 


5 IV, 9, 11. 


7 IV, 2. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 51 

particular manner in which the principle of molecular attraction 
operates in each. Only, a serious difference now appears. In 
the first condition, the type of environing influence did not vary ; 
at least we could posit its substantial sameness. In the second 
condition, we are forced at once to recognize two divergent 
forms, one being acted upon, the other reacting. The nature 
■of man is different from the nature of a stone, and cannot be 
derived from it. 8 The difference lies not in the kind of chemical 
constituents, but in the former's tendency to adapt all influences 
to the maintenance of his own life. In the sphere of organism 
the individual does not wait, so to say, for the external impact 
to be made ; he invites it ; he goes out to meet it. The absorptive 
power of the organism makes its attitude toward inanimate mat- 
ter entirely unique. But once again we meet divergences, not 
in kind but in degree. How far can the organism absorb its 
environment? Or, what sort of stimulus awakens reaction in 
each case? Evidence shows that a common impulse may pre- 
vail, but different objects set up response in different organisms. 
Thus, horse and man are distinguished equally by the desire of 
procreation ; but the desire partakes always of the specific nature 
of the organism. 9 Evidence shows, too, that within the species 
or family group divergent traits appear. Each individual, not- 
ably among species of more complex form, is just a little dif- 
ferent from its neighbor of the same order. We do not mean 
that the primary appetite has changed. The horse remains a 
horse, and the dog a dog. 10 But one particular element in its 
organic equipment has been developed ; for example, the dog has 
been trained to follow the chase; or he belongs to a breed 
trained through several generations to this particular reaction. 
We cannot hold that it is mere environment that makes his 
scent keen and hearing acute; the house-dog may be subject to 
the same stimuli; but is certainly at first dull of response. 11 
There is an essence in each, a habit or mode of reaction, which 
differentiates him from every other of the same organic species. 
This is not the same as the principle of succession, — one in a 

8 1, 8, Sch. i. 10 IV, Pref . 

»III, 57, Sch. "V, Prcf. 



52 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

series of units. Individuality is more than bodily separateness ; 
it is the nucleus of character. 

The fact we have just noted is attested by the nature of the 
gratification enjoyed. It is wellnight impossible, as we have 
shown, 12 to represent to ourselves the feelings of inarticulate 
organisms. We can only say that they differ in intensity ac- 
cording to the degree of reticulation of the nervous system. 
Hence, we hesitate to affix the term "character" to the dog. 
For, so far as we can determine, he has no power of sitting in 
judgment on his own reactions; he has no tendency to compare 
their several values, as denoted by the accruing pleasure. 13 With 
man the case stands otherwise. Differentiation is the key to ex- 
perience. The lofty look of the philosopher and the besotted 
leer of the drunkard express antipodal natures, whose diversity 
even the clogged brain of the latter cannot fail to understand. 
A character has developed. On what basis ? Not alone by virtue 
of the presence of varying stimuli. The reason goes deeper. 
The individuals themselves are not agreed in their original tend- 
encies. The one finds himself emphasizing certain impulses 
which depend on a foreign source for support ; the other seeks to 
eliminate perceptual images, and bathe himself in the glow of 
ideas. Being men, they occupy a coign of vantage; they can 
study their own experience and detect the "special" points in 
which they differ from others. The pleasure of our human 
species consists at times in realizing that in this quality or that 
we excel some less favored companion; and conversely, we sink 
into depression when we find another exulting in perfections 
which are denied us. 14 Again, the process of characterization 
may be examined from the standpoint of some particular emo- 
tion. Thus, love as a permanent impulse assumes several forms, 
the affection of husband and wife, the care of children, the broad 
communal interests of society. Each one of these is subject to 
special treatment in the lives of different agents. The types of 
character are infinitely diversified, the brutal father, the kind 
father, the indulgent father, each type being necessarily corre- 

18 Supra, pg. 42. M III, 57, Sch. M III, 55, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 53 

lated to the nature of the individual under review. 15 We con- 
clude that men as individuals differ, not because they are 
identified by different spacial coordinates, but because they be- 
have in different ways towards surrounding forces. 16 

II 

The way is now cleared for inquiring how a man develops the 
form of behavior which we have settled to call his character. 
We note that judgments of mind are affirmed in the same manner 
as perceptions of sense. They are purposeful acts, definite exer- 
tions of power. Every time we analyze a concept, try out a 
mathematical formula, criticize the technique of a picture, — 
highly speculative modes of thought, — we discharge the function 
of mind. An idea is not an inanimate symbol devised by logic 
to interpret the meaning of conduct; it throbs with the red blood 
of living men. It is an act of will, recording a real change in 
the experience of the agent. 17 But as an intellectual term it 
does not stand alone. It is the final member of a series, and 
cannot be explained apart from the preliminary steps. Every 
decision depends on an adequate cause. 18 Hence, Jacobi's defi- 
nition of a free agent as one who can initiate a course of conduct 
directly opposed to, or not included in the content of proposed 
motives, is baseless. Every act is precisely fortified with actuat- 
ing reasons ; for, as Leibnitz pointed out, 19 when we reject com- 
peting incentives, we do not relieve the mind of constraint, but 
rather introduce a new force, viz., the caprice of judgment. 

But what shall we say of a situation where we cannot decide 
— where impulses are evenly balanced, and reflection coming to 
our aid cannot by closest computation determine which side 
ought to prevail? Here we are volitionally at a standstill, like 
Buridan's ass, and must nullify our power to act, that is, to 
exist, — unless we strike off at a tangent and act without suffi- 
cient cause. The picture, however, is not true to life. There 
is no calculus in practical conduct, with debit and credit exactly 

,s Cf. Ill, 56, Sch. " II, 43, Sch. . 

18 II, 13 Sch. 1S II, 48. 

"Nouveaux Essais, Bk. II, Ch. 21, Sects. 25, 39. 



54 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

even. Action proceeds on regular lines by denotable stages to 
a particular end. It is determined at first by purposes of the 
type; it reaches at length the level of reflection, where a man 
marks out his path, recognizes his character, increases his de- 
gree of freedom, and presses steadily towards a goal. 20 

It will appear, then, that the system which reflective conscious- 
ness develops is defined by purposive action. Freedom cannot 
be a matter of ideas, conceived as a body of categorized facts. 
The inadequacy of the view which calls a man free because he 
has made out a list of universal laws, is well illustrated in 
Fischer's conclusion that Spinoza has analyzed the laws of hu- 
man life, but given no ethical imperative. There is no impera- 
tive when a man is invited to see the good, but not apply it. 
True knowledge as such is of no value in checking emotion; it 
must enter the current of daily life as an impulse to action. 
Mere theoretical differences of good and evil, presented as ideals 
to the mind, cannot influence the choice or direction of an emo- 
tion in the slightest degree. 21 Emotion can only be controlled 
by emotion. 22 In short, truth cannot fashion conduct until a 
man strives to adapt his course to the harmonious activities of 
nature. To do this he need not be a scientific observer or a sage 
versed in the secrets of the ages. He who deliberately follows 
the purpose of his mind will exercise his individual freedom un- 
trammeled. Still, he must not be surprised to find his free flight 
interrupted, even stopped altogether by the tumultuous rush of 
commonplace reactions. 23 The pleasing fancy that critical analy- 
sis of this or that appetite will engender an invincible resolution, 
is entirely misleading. For such resolution is itself a discharge 
of purposeful energy, and must take its place along with simi- 
lar organic tendencies. If these be stimulated in a definite direc- 
tion, if, e.g., the mind be excited to hope for eventual triumph 
in a particular crusade because of momentary successes, shall the 
cool warning of Experience that the elements conducive to the 
end in view are not present, serve to abate one jot or tittle the 

20 II, 49, Sch. 22 IV, 7. 

21 IV, i 4 . "IV, is- 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 55 

ardor which has seized upon body and soul? 24 But if reason 
can retain its place amid the crush of sensory impressions, we 
may take it to be a sure gauge of character. May we not in our 
mature practice verify the crucial formula : "Every emotion 
aroused by the senses can also be determined by the reflective 
mind?" 25 If that be true, then it is likewise true that to live 
and to live rightly are one and same thing. Virtue is the exact 
fulfilment of purpose; virtue is behavior. 26 

But how are we to discover the teleological value of an act? 
The answer is, By its effect on behavior. The rule is inflexible, 
the same for all species. How much did the act increase or 
diminish the power of the organism? Did it produce pleasure 
or pain ? Since man's unique purpose is intellectual, we ask : 
What was the state of mind after this perception or that argu- 
ment? Was his body of knowledge enlarged? Was analytical 
insight quickened? Is he better able to shape his conduct by 
the laws of universal necessity? The residual feeling denotes 
the value of the reaction. 27 Hence, we seek the state of mind 
known as Self-approval, where all emotional threads are woven 
into a consistent whole after the order of nature ; where a man's 
character by its very coherence defines the value of each im- 
pending reaction. 2S Thoughts bred by hatred, envy, pride are 
excluded, because they invariably defeat the work of the organiz- 
ing principle. On the other hand, sentiments of veracity and 
benevolence stimulate the mind and mark out the way to orderly 
conduct. We feel the steady march in the construction of char- 
acter, all our habits conspiring to one end. 29 

Again, if pleasure be the test of good, pain must be the ground 
for our rejection of an injurious stimulus. Very careful dis- 
crimination is needed at this point. Certain emotional traits 
have crept into the company of moral excellences which have 
no right there. Thus, humility is held by some to be a virtue, 
but is in reality the equivalent of pain. It springs from a man's 
contemplation of Jiis own weakness, and is accompanied by a 
loss of power. For how shall we obtain intellectual vigor by 

24 IV, 47. 26 IV, 21, 24. "IV, 52. 

35 IV, 59- "IV, 26. "IV, 73, Soh. 



56 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

studying- what depresses our mind below its par? We need to 
grasp ideas which surpass our own in sweep and complexity. 
In that way only can we widen our scope of action. 30 We must 
deal with anticipations of evil in the same heroic manner. Fear 
is concern in face of something which we cannot fully under- 
stand. 31 It may automatically connect itself with a pleasurable 
image which excludes the existence of the pain-giving object; 
so that when it occurs as revived idea or new sensory experience 
the other idea is necessarily present. Thus, men delight to 
rehearse the dangers of the past, from which they have made 
good their escape, pleasure exceeding pain in the final account. 32 
But fear will continue to obtrude its depressing touch until we 
have extinguished its force through a knowledge of its cause, 
or faced the actual dangers frankly and conquered them. It is 
easy to see how men differ from one another in their attitude 
towards objects, or events which have excited their apprehen- 
sion. 33 In no case is the test so exacting as in the anticipation 
of death. Violent efforts are made, every available resource 
subsidized to ward off the end. Tastes and habits of a lifetime 
are shattered. In their extremity men accept food and medicine, 
which their soul loathes. But the protest is vain. Man must die. 
How shall he meet the final hour? The wise man knows the 
meaning of death and its certainty. His duty is not to meditate 
on its inevitable approach, but on the true profits of a free and 
harmonious life. 34 Pain then passes into pleasure, and the equi- 
librium of character is maintained. 

We conclude that the state of mind succeeding reaction regis- 
ters both its intensity and the power of the stimulating object. 

Ill 

The process which we have called characterization, and may 
define as the working of type-purposes into an individual sys- 
tem, pursues its end by the adoption of means. The agent and 
the environment conspire to determine what the means shall be. 
These two are so commingled in the drive of action as to be 

30 IV, 50, Dem. "Ill, 47, Sch. 

31 III, Def. Emot. xiii. "IV, 69, Sch. ".IV, 63, 67. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 57 

virtually inseparable, except by way of analysis. The rule is 
simple; nothing which is different in its properties can in any 
way affect us for good or harm ; and conversely, whatever agrees 
with our nature is useful to us, that is, sets up reaction in our 
organism. 35 For example, inorganic matter cannot nourish the 
human body, since it has no element that corresponds with the 
organizing principle of the digestive system. But organized sub- 
stances are of great value to us-y — animals included, the fact that 
they are lower than we in the scale of consciousness justifying 
us in using them to suit our needs. 36 So manifold are the 
appetites of the body, and so diverse their modes of satisfaction, 
that we must recruit its vigor and equip the mind for its work 
by tapping every source within reach. "It is the part of a wise 
man to refresh himself with agreeable food and drink, as well 
as with perfumes, the beauty of plants, dress, music, the exercise 
of sports, theatrical spectacles, — in short anything that he can 
use without damage to another." Every such stimulus har- 
moniously assimilated lifts the type of character, and distin- 
guishes its owner from every other unit in the social organism. 
Of course, opinion is not unanimous as to what constitutes a 
true stimulus. Superstition often accounts that to be good which 
administers pain, and rules out merriment and laughter as sub- 
versive of orderly conduct. But why should we not drive away 
melancholy as well as hunger? Only an envious neighbor or 
malevolent divinity could take pleasure in our discomfort or 
reckon tears and sobs and inward dread as essential parts of an 
ethical calculus. 37 

In the main, however, men are agreed as to the basis of 
gratification, and by reason of that agreement enter paradoxi- 
cally the disharmonies of social life. Desire must be judged not 
only by its typical form, but by its ability to reach the goal in 
individual cases. Thus, if two men covet the same thing, they 
are at one in the primary impulse. But the issue of action is 
different. Peter has the image of the desired object as in his 
possession, Paul conceives it as lost. Pleasure and pain, mental 
states subsequent to reaction, determine the value of experience. 

35 IV, 29, 31. "HI, 37, Sch. i. CT IV, 45, Sch. 



58 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

Hence, pain and pleasure attest the particular grade of character- 
ization realized at the moment. 38 So much for an individual 
object. Suppose now we are called upon to reckon the worth of 
a symbol, like money, the means of civilized intercourse. Three 
general reactions are possible. First, money may be regarded as 
the sine qua non of personal gratification, — in the vulgar mind, 
the source of success, luxury in dress and food, splendor of 
position, power over one's fellowmen. These things they de- 
sire; hence, men react to the money-stimulus. Again, money as 
a material object may engross the attention. Not a piece of it 
is relinquished even for bodily wants without a shoot of pain. 
The acquisitive instinct has almost annulled the lust of life. 
Lastly, the sage knowing the true uses of wealth remains con- 
tent with a little, and escapes the contentions of the multitude in 
an unbroken peace of mind. 39 The first character may pass into 
the second, the second rarely into the first; but almost never 
either of them into the renunciation of the third. 

It is universally agreed that from the standpoint of his unique 
purpose nothing is so useful to man as man. The psychological 
grounds we have already considered. Let us now observe in 
what way utility may be secured. It cannot come from passive 
acceptance of sensuous impressions. They are "uncharacter- 
ized" emotions, common to man and beast. If we are looking 
only for what will gratify the five senses of body we cannot 
find a single object altogether useful to all men. Whenever we 
affirm our natural right to life and the means for its mainte- 
nance, we immediately tread upon another's territory. Inter- 
ests conflict; dissensions, war and death follow. The primary 
purpose is thwarted. 40 There is, however, a good common to 
all men. It has no mechanical equivalent; it is not individuated 
by time and place. It is man's nature construed from the angle 
of his unique purpose. It is the "other aspect" of his behavior. 
Man alone possesses this good, inasmuch as man alone can 
correlate his conduct with the universal activity of nature. And 
man is bound to introduce it into the life of his neighbor; his 
own security depends upon mutual enjoyment. Precisely what 

S8 IV, 33; 34, Sch. W IV, App. 28, 29. *IV, 37, Sch. ii. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 59 

is this good, which may become the property of all without en- 
gendering intrigue or competition? It is difficult to define it in 
any terms short of a general formula, as, for example, "knowl- 
edge of God." 41 Nevertheless, from time immemorial men have 
sought to realize it in the organic constitution of the State. 
Whatever guarantees harmony in the social structure is un- 
deniably good. Love of justice, respect for law, due regard for 
the interests of all citizens are basic principles both of civil gov- 
ernment and individual liberty. Indeed, it may be taken as an 
axiom that freedom gained within the bounds of society is far 
superior to that presupposed in the life of solitude. Why? Be- 
cause character requires discipline, such as the heedless youth 
chafes under, and indignantly throws off by quitting his father's 
house, only to learn in the hardships of war and the penalties of 
camp how through tribulation we must enter into tranquillity 
of mind. 42 

The tentative realization of the good has given opportunity 
for the diversification of character. Character does not settle 
down to the dead level of monotony. Being still in the field of 
physical effort, it cannot escape the peculiarities of reaction in- 
cident to the constant changes of life. Hence, differences in 
character will depend on a man's success in systematizing his 
crowding sense-perceptions after the pattern of nature's har- 
mony. 43 He will at the same time make sure of his own degree 
of freedom. Freedom increases with the steady growth of 
character, that is to say, with every successful affirmation of his 
unique purpose. He has abandoned the uncritical notion that 
we are abridged in function because we cannot be as tall as trees, 
as aggressive as a lion, or as distinguished in some particular 
trait as our neighbor. 44 To be free, we must steadily move 
within the limits of our purpose, becoming every moment more 
sure of our course, "and hence more independent in its construc- 
tion. Therefore, whenever a purpose conceived by the imagina- 
tion is found false^ and inadequate in the light of universal 
experience we shall prove our liberty by expelling it. And when- 

41 IV, 36. Dem. « IV, 37. 

42 IV, 40, 73, App. 14. - III, 55, Sch. 



6o JAMES H. DUNHAM 

ever an event contradicts the postulates of our private fancy we 
shall stay our mind on the sure working-out of that fundamental 
order which we as parts thereof implicitly follow. 45 To make 
sure of advancing steadily the degree of ethical freedom, we 
should adopt certain general rules, and committing them to 
memory apply them with confidence when sudden passion over- 
takes the soul. We conclude that character and freedom go 
hand in hand in the unfolding of individual purpose. 46 

But we must not suppose that conduct is entitled to the name 
character only when directed to a so-called virtuous end. The 
fact that the characterizing process moves progressively for- 
ward, no matter how vaguely conscious we may be of its ten- 
dency, proves that the end is not voluntarily imposed by us, but 
belongs to the organic system. The end qua end is neither vicious 
nor virtuous; it is an element in the teleological series. Ethical 
judgments are devised by social experience, and are valuable as 
guides to action, not as interpreters of our nature. Thus, the 
thief has as much right as the honest man to claim a "good" 
for his character, — though we admit he cannot reach the un- 
ruffled repose of mind which springs alone from complete acqui- 
escence in natural law. 47 His career is built within a consistent 
whole. His guiding principle is that all things are his, that he 
need not respect the sanctity of possession with which civil law 
has hedged the goods of his neighbor. If he conclude that 
committing crime is a sure way to obtain the better life, he 
would be recreant to his obligation as a being of unique purpose 
did he not follow that leading, even though it brought him to 
the gallows, — that too representing as clear a fulfilment of 
human desire as sitting by his own table. 

Yet we must remember that no individual purpose, however 
commanding, can overcome the salient impulses common to all 
life. We cannot in our right mind crush the will to live. Hence, 
the criminal, sunk never so low in vice, always aims to work out 
the accepted program without endangering his organic con- 
tinuity. He is obviously a prey to passion; for he develops his 
career solely through the avenues of sense, and with a view to 

45 IV, App. 32. 46 V, 10, Sch. 4I Epis. 23. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 61 

sensuous ends. 48 Still, behavior is not without a plan. The 
genius of intellect, his own by inherited equipment, has taught 
him how to use the forces about him for a malevolent purpose. 
He does not differ from the good man in mental power, but in 
temperament, in moral atmosphere, charged oftentimes with the 
venom of a definite objective. His character is a coherence of 
badness, because every reaction of body and every "idea" of 
mind answer to the same general tendency. Thus, in the man 
we are observing, love and hate, opposite dispositions, could 
not coexist. Hate has secured the ascendancy according to the 
well-known axiom that two contrary emotions in the same sub- 
ject must undergo change, one or both, until they are at length 
entirely congruous. 49 That intuitive vision which makes us 
forget the world for love of truth can find no room here. The 
facts are plain; why they are so, and not otherwise, is a question 
which it is not competent for us to discuss. Out of the infinite 
number of moulds at nature's command we could never be sure 
which one was to be used, — until we saw the product. But the 
facts assure us that the systematizing of conduct goes on apace, 
on lower levels, as well as on the summits of wisdom, and that 
even in the conception of crime freedom has not disowned her 
sovereign claims. A man is as free to do evil as to do good. 50 
But what shall we say of cases that seem to admit of excep- 
tion? If a man suddenly drops his antipathy towards another, 
and begins to view him with affection; if a timid nature, at 
times almost craven in temper, is in a great emergency endowed 
with conquering courage; if a pious man yields his devotion for 
an instant under the whip of human cowardice; — must we con- 
clude that the fabric of behavior has changed, and that an en- 
tirely new set of reactions has superseded the old? Again, if 
we find a manifest vacillation in the judgments of the agent 
under observation, his ethical actions being defined according to 
the momentary impressions of the senses, — shall we hold that 
the mind is a tissue of conflicting ideas, with no harmonizing 
principle? 51 The conclusions already established point in another 

48 IV, 32. 60 Epis. 23. 

49 V, Ax. i. "Ill, 51, Sch. 



62 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

direction. The forces of body being integrated by a funda- 
mental impulse, the system of ideas corresponding thereto can- 
not fail to have a common centre, which is expressed by Spinoza 
in the words: "The mind endeavors to conceive only such 
things as assert its power of activity." 52 Hence, while in any 
particular character great divergence of motives may be found, 
still every act will have its place in the consistent scheme of be- 
havior. Our embarrassment results from the necessarily in- 
complete view of the subjective scheme. If the intricate proc- 
esses of thought were brought fully to light, we should not be 
constrained to charge our subject with incompatibility. Thus, 
Judas does not suddenly change his shape under stress of temp- 
tation. The enticements expressed in the query, "What will ye 
give me ?" afford woefully meagre ground of accounting for an 
attitude which is superficially contrary to his habitual regard. 
Such ulterior motives as disappointment, pique, hope of personal 
preferment, are absent from the record. But even they could 
not explain his reversal of feeling. We are forced to wrap the 
traitorous act in the envelope of a coherent character, 53 and 
say, If we had known all there was to Judas, we should not 
have been surprised at his course. But this is only to acknowl- 
edge the operation of a law of character running evenly with 
the law of mechanism. In the latter, we affirm a thing must 
happen ; in the former, we say it should. Sollen not muessen is 
the rule of conduct. We are obliged, not compelled to perform 
a certain act. 

IV 

We have described character as the differentiating element in 
human life. Men are not unlike because they are units in the 
social structure. To exist as separate bodies cannot of itself 
guaranty variety of form. 54 Men are different by reason of a 
particular unfolding of the Conatus. The kind of stimulus and 
the strength of emotional reaction vary, and with them the type 

"HI, 54- 

68 Cf. Joachim's use of the same general idea of coherence, — "Spinoza," Bk. 
II. Appendix, sect. 8, etc. 
64 Cf. I, 17, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 63 

of character. We cannot therefore sit down and deliberately 
conceive a character which we at once proceed to reproduce in 
conduct. The elements which enter into the completed career 
are present already in the individual without our connivance. 
They wait to be unfolded. They cannot be gathered into a 
characterized system as by some kaleidoscopic movement. They 
come one by one to the surface. Hence, the process of making 
character is undated. 55 It does not at a certain point reach its 
zenith and then remain unalterable. It presents itself in the 
guise of a dialectic 56 which is ever moving towards the Abso- 
lute, viz., a finished personality. Every synthetic adjustment is 
a signal for the setting up of new terms in the dialectical series. 
We begin in each instance with the sense of organic depression ; 
that is the thesis; and we endeavor to the best of our ability to 
conceive things which exclude the existence of the enervating 
forces, — that is the antithesis. 57 The direction of the change is 
always from the passive to the active, from automatic reaction 
to a reflective guidance of behavior. 58 Hence, when the new 
synthesis appears, while it cannot once for all reject the moulding 
influence of outside bodies, it will yet be a little more sure of its 
own autonomy, that is to say, its power to shape behavior ac- 
cording to its individual purpose. Freedom obtains a new in- 
crement, and life broadens commensurately. 

But progress as visualized in the dialectic is not achieved 
without effort. There are two situations which meet the agent, 
and in each of them his ethical strength will be sternly tested. 
The first of these concerns the fact of excess, evidence of which 
we found in certain phases of organic development. There 
excess crystallized into habit, and became the point of departure 
for new biological types. Here, one emotion, whose stimulus 
exceeds in intensity the body's resisting power, tends to a polar- 
ized state, the agent being changed into a man of one idea, the 
proponent of mental obsession. 59 Such a condition may be 
salutary, providing^ the right phases of underlying purpose are 

55 III, 8. "in, i, Cor. 

m Cf. Brunschvicg. "Spinoza" pg. 103, etc. 1804. 
"Ill, 13. 58 IV, 6, 44. 



64 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

emphasized. 60 But it may easily develop the most dangerous 
proclivities, as when the sybarite accepts the enticements of 
bodily pleasure, giving no thought to their ultimate effects nor 
reasoning out the relations of such sensations to the finer sensi- 
bilities of the mind. 61 In this way the object of pleasure grows 
so absorbing in its fascination that although absent he regards 
it as present to his eyes, and even in sleep or delirium is not 
released from its thrall. 62 How very difficult it is for the moral 
dialectic to proceed past this point, may readily be surmised. 

Nevertheless, we cannot allow it to be permanently thwarted, 
in view of the serious social entanglements produced by such a 
character. For we may regard with pity or ridicule the lovelorn 
youth, as one sunk in a dream from which eventually, perhaps 
with bitter memories, he shall awake. The miserly or ambitious 
man, however, is of a different complexion. His acts affect the 
wellbeing of society, and interfere with its true development. 
Hence, he must if possible be disillusioned. 63 But how? The 
polarized impulse yields its hold with great reluctance. For 
instance, the proud man feeds his emotional gratification with 
the honeyed words of flatterer and parasite, and persistently 
avoids the company of judicious observers. For him there is 
a decided increase of power in the under-estimation of his con- 
temporaries. Yet after all the complacence is superficial; it can 
be easily pricked. It is based on ignorance of the vital pur- 
poses, type-impulses of our nature. It is a negation of the true 
self. To remove such negation by the process of dialectics is 
the business of an Ethic. 

We begin with the fact that the pleasure of. pride is not un- 
mixed. It is accompanied by pain, for no being like ourselves 
can suffer injury without the mind's being disagreeably affected 
in its turn. 64 There is too an acknowledged feeling that if we 
carry the analysis far enough we must certainly discover ele- 
ments of superiority in other men, which would seriously impair 

m IV, 52. M IV, 44, Sch. 

61 Cf. V, 23, Sch. w III, 47. 

62 IV, 44, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 65 

our calculated serenity. 05 The thesis is plain, viz., organic de- 
pression, and is flanked by its antithetical terms, a character 
guided by reason, able to correlate its varying judgments to the 
needs of a single purpose. The antithesis may take the form 
of an Example, a Pattern of beauty and grace, into which the 
experiences of uncounted generations are woven. This, while 
not the completed personality, is nevertheless for the moment 
an absolute, and in accordance with its demands the next ethical 
synthesis may be framed. 66 In the case before us the excess of 
self-love is met with a true statement of what the self is, and 
how it should be valued. When the dialectic of Pride is finished, 
we shall not by any means have reached the projected goal, but 
we shall have extinguished the autocratic excess of mere opin- 
ion, thereby proving the process to be strictly dialectical in form, 
since it definitely abandoned its starting-point. The first situ- 
ation is solved by the realization of desire, which has its roots 
in reason. There all excess is excluded. 67 

But the first situation is a variation of the second, which 
records the play of contradictory impulses, and waits upon the 
subject for decision. The ingrained habit and the stubborn trait 
of character yield only after the pressure of individual purpose 
has been strongly felt. Hence, there must be a struggle between 
what is and what in the nature of things ought to be. An ag- 
gravated case like Pride may not disclose the sharp issues and 
bitter contentions which are present in commoner experiences; 
but it confirms the primary axiom of conduct, that no step for- 
ward is taken without the annulment or change of one group 
of motives by an act of choice. 68 Conscious life is an arena. 
Stimulating forces conflict, and for a moment thwart the unity 
of organic action. Thereupon, fluctuations of mind appear, 
leading us to affirm now the first, again the second of two 
courses, and involving us always in an uncertainty of mood as 
to which way the balance will incline. Thus, if we conceive a 
resemblance between a person who has affected us disagreeably 
and one who has gained our affection, we shall regard the former 

65 III, 55, Sch. 67 IV, 61. 

66 IV, Pref . M V, Ax. i. 



66 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

with mingled feelings of hate and love ; and our attitude towards 
him will depend on which feeling is uppermost in mind at the 
moment. 69 Again, the fluctuation may spring from the fact 
that my regard for a particular object is met by another's mani- 
fest aversion from the same. Nature prompts me at once to 
ask what defect or antagonizing principle lies hidden in its 
form. If he shrank from it, why not I? Shall I inconsiderately 
accept what another man has rejected? Even the most ardent 
lover sustains an abatement of pleasure in face of a slight cast 
upon his beloved. A struggle, an indecisive interval impends, 
until one emotion asserts its superior power and wins the vic- 
tory. 70 The experience is universal, and is part of the warp and 
woof of character. We cannot be men if we decline the gage 
of battle. Problems of the most serious import press for settle- 
ment ; they must be settled, or the unity of the organism is spent. 
Just what do the problems involve? 

We shall examine the three groups of contradictory impulses 
which Spinoza adduces. First, one and the same desire is broken 
up into two forms, pure and impure. Let the desire be the pri- 
mary lust for life, finding vent in the career of an avaricious 
man. As a fundamental purpose it is unmixed and rational. 
But when the love of goods, whose primary significance is their 
use for the support of life, degenerates into a love of goods for 
their own sake, it becomes impure. These two aspects are forced 
at times into opposition, as when a man in desperation casts his 
substance into the sea in order to avoid death. Nature's first 
law triumphs for a moment, but the character of the agent is 
unchanged. Inwoven qualities are not easily disentangled. The 
dialectic, stayed amid the tempests of the seas, begins again with 
redoubled energy as soon as land is reached. This is the story 
of a type-purpose versus individual character. 71 

The same contrast is at hand when one of the motives has 
entered the reflective consciousness. To . take an example : 
Honor may be defined as gratification accompanied by the idea 
of our action as approved by others. 72 It may be a pure emo- 
tion, a creditable desire,' — hence an object of reasonable quest. 

89 III, 17 and Sch. "Ill, Def. Emot xlviii. 

70 III, 31 and C. "HI, Def. Emot, xxx. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 67 

Thus conceived it becomes the basis for all friendly relations be- 
tween man and man, being guaranteed by the terms of moral 
obligation. But it is extremely easy to modify the reactive 
power of honor by a change in the stimulating medium. If for 
instance its strength be rooted in popular acclaim, as when the 
statesman strives by meretricious means to gain acceptance of 
his policies, then honor is an empty name, which can only be 
maintained by tickling the public's fancy through increasingly 
sensational devices, until at length men tire of their idol and 
transfer their affections to another. 73 Here again, the dialectic 
of character involves the passage from the impure to the pure 
form of impulse. Just so far as we are able to cultivate the at- 
tribute of honor without the interposition of transitory stimuli, 
just to that degree do we advance the dialectical process towards 
the final but unattainable term, an absolutely perfect self. 

The second group of conflicting emotions includes debased 
forms of the same impulse. They are contrary not by nature, 
but by accidental property, — they draw in different directions. 74 
Thus, avarice and luxury go back to the same source, viz., self- 
love. Their expressions however are different, being the effects 
of varying stimuli. The particular stimulus, the glitter of gold, 
working for years upon plastic mind, has rendered it almost 
exclusively responsive to itself, and not to another. Hence, the 
avaricious man refuses to disburse his funds for purposes of in- 
dulgence, though he does not decline to "gorge himself with 
food and drink at another's expense." 75 The dialectic here as 
before sets actual facts and ideal presentments in opposition. 
The antithetical term considers what the agent wishes his char- 
acter to be ; that is to say, what its natural tendency is. Only, 
in the conflict of impure desires the ideal can never be a propo- 
sition which we should venture to invite men generally to adopt. 
For if mankind should adopt the scheme of life inculcated by 
avarice, the very foundations upon which the scheme rests would 
be undermined. The inference is that the dialectic cannot stop 
with the framing of a bad ideal. It must eventually accept as 

73 IV, 27, Sch. i., 58. "Ill, Def. Emot. xlviii. 

74 IV, Def. V. 



68 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

its negating term the rule of reason, by which alone man can 
win his proper freedom. 7B Hence, in the last analysis, we get 
back to the contrast between the facts of sense and the facts of 
reason, whence the dialectic pursues its upward march 
unceasingly. 

Still a third group of competitive desires confronts the stu- 
dent, — the largest and most conspicuous, the groundwork of 
every dialectic. Love and hate contend for mastery in every 
conscious life. 77 The phases of conflict are infinite, and every 
new juxtaposition establishes a new dialectical series. We select 
for examination the critical phase where the beloved turns the 
glance of indifference on her lover and bestows her affection on 
his rival. The pleasurable feeling is stayed; its power begins to 
recede. Reflective argument as to the former's ingratitude is not 
needed to account for the change. 78 Natural feeling cannot 
brook an unresponsive attitude. Jealousy and hate enter the 
conscious field, and the battle of emotions is joined. If the early 
love was deep and strong, it would not yield except under the 
greatest pressure; and if at any moment a glint of favor lights 
the eye of the beloved, it will kindle again its ancient ardor, ex- 
tinguishing the incipient hate. 70 Thus, the warfare of contend- 
ing impulse proceeds ; thus the dialectic is developed ; thus, too,, 
'the most tragic story in the field of consciousness is told. Every 
decision fits securely into the scheme of character, but at the same 
time opens up a new situation, which must in turn be resolved. 
That is to say, the quest upon which we have embarked is clearly 
without end, and the goal we conceive is forever approached, but 
never embraced. 

V 

Given the terms to the conflict, how shall its issue be de- 
termined? Spinoza adopts two general tests: First, is the 
cause of the reaction present or absent? Secondly, is the cause 
necessary or contingent? 80 The element of time is, we know, 
decisive as to the value of an impression. The image of a stimu- 

78 Cf. IV, 72. 7S IV, 41, Sch. S0 IV, 9, n. 

71 III, 13, Sch. "Ill, 35, Sch.; V, 10 Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 69 

lating object remains present to the mind until displaced by an- 
other. If the image be of an object which we expect to enter 
consciousness at a later period, it is bound to be shadowed by 
others of present experience. Thus, hope may be defined as an 
inconstant pleasure, springing from the image of something 
future, the issue of which we do not as yet understand. Hope 
cannot be as strong as sight; we know what we see. For while 
we are ready to believe as true whatever hope reposes in, we are 
aware how quickly and effectively its objects have been shat- 
tered by the relentless argument of facts. sl If now the mind's 
grasp of a future event is fainter, it follows that desire for it is 
less acute. Hence, whenever a conflict of motives involves a 
disparity of time, other conditions being equal, the present cause 
will always lay its conquering hand upon the agent. He must 
choose it ; even when he knows the good or evil, the favorable or 
unfavorable effects on his career, he must still choose it. It is 
beside the point to argue that reason determines the merits of a 
cause apart from its emergence in time. 82 That is true, and its 
dictum exercises an increasingly large influence in the progress 
of the dialectic. But for the average man desires are gauged by 
their contact with environing forces. Hence, reasoned motives 
may be upset or dislodged by the intensity of reactions when the 
energy of body is palpably inferior to that of the stimulus. This 
is the general rule, verified in every moral contest. We have no 
assurance that because wisdom warns us to adopt a good which 
comes to fruition in the future, we can beat back the storm of 
passion, pressing at this moment on our reluctant sensibilities. 83 
The other rule for determining the issue marks the distinction 
between the necessary and the contingent. Reaction to the idea 
of necessity and of existence is the same. Whatever we con- 
ceive to exist, exists for us, and makes its certain impression on 
the mind. Whatever we conceive as not existing, or as not hav- 
ing its causal nexus sufficiently clear, so as to be regarded as 
certain, cannot produce the reaction of an existent or present 
object. In the case of necessary causes the strength of the re- 
fill, 18, Sch. ii; 51, Sch. " IV, 15, Dem. 
82 IV, 62. 



70 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

action is equal to that of an object present to consciousness, plus 
the fact that if the object be withdrawn from view its causal 
relations remain unchanged in the mind. 84 It appears, then, 
that contradictory emotions can be reconciled only by giving the 
necessary cause the right of way. Thus, if we cannot decide at 
once whether we should venerate or envy the man of prudence at 
our side, it is incumbent upon us to inquire if we ourselves do 
or can possess the same quality of mind. If not, then envy is 
not the necessary reaction, inasmuch as man can only envy his 
equal. Instead of that, we are moved to wonder; we are obliged 
to gaze upon, and admire, what is steadily denied to us, because 
of its very uniqueness. The mind is transfixed with its glow. 85 
The decision in this and other cases may be reached after long 
and tedious experience; but the issue of the dialectic is sure, on 
the basis of the governing rule. 

We have applied the two rules to conduct pursued in the com- 
mon walks of life. They become more effective in the light of 
critical suggestion. The real significance of choice can be seen 
at this point. Choice is not a balancing of two possible courses 
and the ultimate appropriation of that one which commends 
itself to our fancy. Ethical purpose concerns only the good. 
Evil for it has no existence. The basic question is not, Shall 
we do this or that? but, Hozv shall we do this? The differ- 
ence between the two theories of moral conduct is the difference 
between the healthy man's and the sick man's attitude to food; 
one eats with evident relish ; the other eats even obnoxious food, 
in order to elude the grip of death. That is to say, the purport 
of action is not a choice between good and evil in the first in- 
stance, but an affirmation of the fundamental purpose. 86 We are 
taught to value motives not by the comparative strength of their 
reactions, but by their relation to the general good of the system. 
For this reason the greater of two goods and the lesser of two 
evils should be accepted, because eventually trje lesser evil will 
really prove to be a good, while the lesser good, by itself a 
valuable emotion, is, compared with its competitor, distinctly 
inferior as a means for developing the powers of body and mind. 

"1,33, Sch. i. "111,56,52. -IV, 63. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 71 

These facts convince us that the wise man alone pursues a satis- 
factory course, since he alone can detect what actions are of 
primary importance in life, and what can best further his indi- 
vidual purposes. 87 

Hence at length we ask, as we note the progressive dialectic, 
What determines the issue in each particular contest? Not 
simply the rules just deduced; they are the framework, the cate- 
gories, within which the organizing force works. Man's unique 
purpose moulds his conduct. It steals forth from its conceal- 
ment with the widening intelligence of the actor. Reflection now 
evokes the very decisions which formerly were produced by the 
senses. But the basis of choice is different. Unchastened im- 
pulse chooses because it is near; reason, because the object is 
more akin to our character. 88 Consistency as the symbol of 
behavior grows more pronounced. Therefore, we may confi- 
dently predict the outcome of each new moral struggle, — not 
indeed in precise terms, for the causal series is teleological, not 
mechanical, and the subject may have a stratum of thought as 
yet unknown to us, — but as belonging to the characterized sys- 
tem whose terms we have watched unfolding one by one. Fur- 
thermore, we may be certain that in proportion as we exalt the 
"better part of our nature," which is man's unique purpose, over 
against the disorganizing impressions of sense, in that propor- 
tion shall we advance our degree of freedom, and despite our 
union with nature recognize our behavior as our own. 89 

To this point has the quest for a character brought us. Can 
human freedom go beyond it? 

8 ?IV, 65, 66, C; Sch. 89 IV, App. xxxi. 

88 IV, 59, 62. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE REALIZATION OF SELF 
i. The Meaning of Selfhood 

Man as we have hitherto described him is clearly the product 
of individuation. Even in the making of character he feels 
himself a creature of circumstance, in the sense that differences 
of disposition cannot account for his individual purposes. He 
may remove every reaction from the thought of an external 
cause, but he cannot free himself from its environment, or ex- 
clude once for all the gratifications of sense which such contact 
provokes. In other words, man though furnished with a char- 
acter is still an individual, a part of nature, subject to the un- 
ceasing activity of her laws. 

But if man be an individual acting in harmony with her 
movements, can he have any freedom beyond that belonging to 
the type-purposes of his kind? We have found him exercising 
the functions of organic life, free to move within its boundaries. 
Can he now by specializing his behavior discriminate also degrees 
of freedom among individuals? Is one man freer than another, 
the wise and just than the slave of vice? Again — passing to 
actual experience^ — can I determine what objects shall influence 
my conduct? Can I plan to forestall a possible reaction and if 
necessary evade it altogether? Do the facts of psychology prove 
that I, that any man is at liberty to differentiate the human 
mode of life from that of the lower organisms, adapting method 
to need by reflective intent, and giving infinitely varied expres- 
sion of the very end which bird and insect pursue by the drive 
of instinct? Still further, can the possessor of reason note a 
continuous progress in his individual character answering to the 
terms of the logical dialectic, each conclusion registering a new 
level in the realization of man's unique purpose, and hence a 
new increment of freedom? 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 73 

These questions we believe have been favorably answered. A 
man is free to develop the kind of character which belongs to 
his particular equipment, as over against every other individual 
in the human series. But we have not fully described our sub- 
ject when we have dealt with him as a man amongst men, one 
of an infinite series. We must next deal with him as a man 
apart from men. He is not only conscious; he is conscious of 
self. In this new definition he reaches his true reality. Here by 
a process that eludes our grasp he enters the domain of intelli- 
gent reflection, having passed beyond the bounds of organic 
appetition. Here he is at home, so to speak, with his essence, 
discovers his affinity with men of like mind, and pursues his 
struggle towards the goal of complete self-realization. 

I 

Consciousness, we found Spinoza teaching, 1 is the organizing 
principle in the human body. It is not itself one of two reals, 
of both of which psychology must take account. There is only 
one substance, severally viewed, now as extension, again as 
thought. Every percept in the mind has its exact correlate in 
physical change. This point-to-point correspondence is rigid 
and invariable. 

The structure of an organism is intact ; it is "a self-sustaining 
whole. It has properties which the mass of rock or the crystal 
fails to exhibit; its every organ reflects the operating principle 
of the whole. It reveals a definite tendency to remain in its 
established state, to maintain its organic integrity. Still again, 
it has a potential character; what an organism is in its early 
stages, is at times a mere shadow of what it will become. But 
whatever shapes or capacities it develops, are all involved and 
included in its primitive form, subject in their unfolding to the 
variety and degree of environing stimuli. And finally, organic 
life affirms its unity by an empirical test, viz., by generating one 
•or more beings precisely like itself and endowed with the same 
structural individuality. 

So much for the body — can we say the same for the mind? 

1 Sup. pp. 43, seq. 



74 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

The treatment of this question, though tainted with Rationalism,, 
forestalls in a remarkable manner the conclusions of at least one 
school of modern experimenters. In Def. iii, Part II, Spinoza 
refers to the mind as a "thinking thing" (res cogitans), and 
betrays thereby the atmosphere he was forced to breathe. But 
even Locke, who broke up sensation into its residual bits, and 
Hume, who refused to find any causal connection between suc- 
cessive events, whether in mechanics or perception, could not get 
rid of the notion of a common background into whose recesses 
the various psychic phenomena inevitably retreated. Spinoza 
was much more logical. If causality rules in the world of mat- 
ter, it rules forthwith in the world of thought. The sensations 
of body are determined thus and so by the laws of its structure. 
Hence, the images of mind corresponding thereto are not dis- 
connected, and variable in movement, but parts of a steady cur- 
rent. If then the structure of an organism be a well-rounded 
whole, its functional imprints, even when as in the case of 
man they are infinitely diversified, must also be a unit. 

At this point the author enters a reservation. We must be 
careful, he says, not to identify the body as a purposeful system 
with this particular object which maintains unceasingly the cir- 
culation of the blood. Death comes in other ways than by 
reducing the body to a cadaver. The inward proportion of mo- 
tion and rest, that is to say, the nice adjustment of the mechan- 
isms of the brain, may be so disturbed as to change completely 
the nature of the man. Thus, a Spanish poet on recovering from 
a serious illness was altogether isolated from his earlier mental 
experiences and "could not believe the plays and tragedies he 
had written to be his own." But for the fact that he remembered 
his mother tongue he would have been thrown into the state of 
intellectual infancy. 2 The reservation here so carefully made 
really transgresses the rule of organic unity which Spinoza him- 
self has laid down, and in the light of modern research is not 
needed to support his theory. 3 Multiple personality is at root 

3 IV, 30, Sen. 

3 Cf. McDougall, Body and Mind, pg. 346, for an interpretation of the: 
same phenomena from the standpoint of interactionism. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 75 

not a complex of two or more contending personalities within 
the same body, but one self in its divergent forms, which could 
— were they all known — be fitted into as harmonious a system as 
is the bodily organism which it expresses. For the difference 
of mental content is no more marked between these "selves" 
than between the intelligence of the child and the matured reason 
of the man. Indeed, as the author himself admits, the naive 
observer could be persuaded that he, too, had passed through 
childhood only by comparing the varying stages of life about 
him. 4 

It is difficult to study the development of consciousness in 
subhuman species. How far systematization has proceeded in 
each must be determined by the way in which behavior reflects 
the primordial impulses of the organism. With man the case 
stands otherwise. We now deal with mind, re-inforced by a 
new and more powerful impulse. Reflection, the new aspect of 
the correlating principle, reveals the same integrating tendency. 
If every organism by its self-preservative instinct is able to pick 
and choose amid the swarm of stimulating objects, — "under- 
standing their points of agreement, difference and contrast," 5 — 
certainly man with his critical powers is fitted to control his 
reactions with a view to his ultimate good. 6 In other words, 
intellect is the ground of all rational life. It alone can define 
the purpose towards which human energies tend. 7 It alone can 
impress upon us the value of courses which ultimately inure to 
the best development of body and mind. 8 It is this impulse 
which keeps life steady amid conflicting currents, which counsels 
cordial submission to situations, whose grip we cannot break. 9 
Finally, it is reflection which shows us how to escape from the 
servitude of sense into the broad spaces of communion with total 
nature. 10 That mind such as this can be other than an organized 
system, a conscious whole, is an inadmissible proposition. 

But when we say that reflection organizes a system of ideas, 
we must not fall into the error which blighted the Cartesian 

"IV, 39, Sch. 'IV, App. v. 9 IV, App. xxxii. 

5 II, 29, Sch. 8 IV, 36. w V, 25. 

•IV, 23. 



?6 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

doctrine. 11 Intellect and will are not separate faculties within 
the soul, — concentric circles, each controlling absolutely its ap- 
propriate radii. Mental experience is atomic in the sense that 
percepts move as individual objects across the screen. It is not 
atomic, if by applying that term we rob perception of its genetic 
associates. It would be a travesty on the critical work of intel- 
ligence if concepts were framed by sporadic guesses or a chance 
alignment of sensory images. In other words, mind is just as 
far from being a congeries of unrelated sensations as it is from 
being the seat of certain compartment-tight faculties. Intelli- 
gence is an active principle, a governing force — vis perseve- 
randi 12 that cuts its way through the mass of environing 
perceptions and makes ever more clear the path of man's auton- 
omy. 13 By virtue of this aggressive tendency, first of all, the 
mind is able to conceive the idea of its continuity. Sensation is 
the only ground of recollection ; hence, we could never remember 
the phases of our pre-existence, supposing there has been any. 
The Cartesian theory of innate ideas, immediate presentations 
of the mind, is likewise inept; they need a guarantee, which the 
mind must furnish for them. But the rational impulse, the 
tendency of mind which turns images of sense into commanding 
concepts and in the person of the wise man evolves definite rules 
of action, this proves its power by its deeds. "We feel and 
know," exclaims Spinoza, "that we are eternal. . . . For the 
eyes of the mind, by which it sees and considers, constitute the 
demonstration.'' That is to say, the perpetual drive of intelli- 
gence in teaching a man how to construct logical methods and 
practical policies which make for his progressive development, 
carries with it a sure argument for its own integrity. Mind is 
not a succession of feelings, emerging for a moment above the 
threshold of experience and then disappearing; mind is the pre- 
sentation of feelings in their due relations, which lower organ- 
isms cannot understand, but which man is permitted to examine 
from a new point of view. 14 To this examination we now 
address ourselves. 

"II, 49, Sch. 13 V, 7. 

"II, 45, Sch. U V, 23 Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 77 

II 

Intelligence has been defined as the impulse which differenti- 
ates the human species from its neighbors. But man and brute 
are as organisms complete in themselves. Every animal has an 
individual career, and if he could discuss it we should find it 
truly balanced. But the very fact that he cannot discuss it, 
while man can, argues a profound cleavage between the two ex- 
periences. Man becomes conscious of a self; the dog, so far as 
we can judge, does not. Now if there be no specific faculty to 
prescribe action, 15 no psychic warp into which sensory figures 
are woven, how are we to conceive the personal identity which 
we are accustomed to call the Self? "It is in the nature of 
reason," writes Spinoza, "to perceive things under a certain 
form of eternity." 16 The eternal part of a perceived object is 
the element which it has in common with other objects of the 
same kind. Thus, it is essential to a triangle that the interior 
angles should be equal to two right angles. Take away that 
property and you destroy the triangularity of the figure. Hence 
whenever you see a triangle, you know the measure of its in- 
terior angles. And if you never see one, you are aware of the 
eternal validity of the law. 17 For a thing is objectively real not 
alone when it is fixed by the coordinates of time and place, but 
just as surely when it is "contained in God," that is, is universal 
in application. The essence of a thing is what is true, whether it 
is seen or thought. 18 

Let us apply this to the case in point. Will as a definite faculty 
does not exist. The agent does not rise up at a crucial moment 
and exclaim, "I will to be a man." He is a man by virtue of 
the ceaseless operation of his intelligent impulse, which he did 
not by private volition inaugurate. Conscious life in the higher 
species is signalized by two facts, sense-perception and memory, 
which are not unique in man and cannot enter into definition of 
his self. Common opinion errs grossly in this connection. It 
identifies personality with a man's capacity for bodily reaction, 

15 II, 48, Sch. 17 II, 49. 

19 II, 44, C. 1S V, 29, Sch. 



;S JAMES H. DUNHAM 

which, it is assumed, will be continued in a future existence. 19 
But this is to misconceive the meaning of the self. If human 
nature consists solely in the concatenated sensations of body, 
we may indeed give man a "character," but we can never endow 
him with the authority of a person, the right to call his actions 
his own. The key to this age-long conundrum Spinoza seems 
to find in the notion of the Universal. 20 We must not stop 
with cataloguing sensory images, each as the "idea" of its cor- 
responding reaction and together totalled as the mind. If the 
percept interprets the physical change and the object that pro- 
duced it, surely it in turn may be subject to a like process, the 
interpretation being based upon a comparison of prior and suc- 
ceeding percepts. Now the "Form" of the Aristotelian philos- 
ophy was the sum of universal elements which denned the ob- 
ject. The Form of the mind is the universal principle which 
alone can define or correlate every percept and concept that pass 
never so swiftly through it, even when the mind is sunk into 
sleep. In other words, Selfhood is the Universal at stake, not 
as one of the logical categories, for none of them fits; but as 
persistent fact of consciousness. That a man can compare his 
acts before and after a given moment and find in them similar 
elements, proclaims his conduct as raised above the automatic 
experience of the dog, which is dependent on a series of sensory 
images for his every attainment. That he can do so with unfail- 
ing regularity, growing at every stroke more settled in his indi- 
vidual independence, proves that the new "universal" is not a 
makeshift function, arbitrarily conceived and flourishing for a 
moment, but a permanent property of mind, as surely man's as 
is his impulse to preserve his being. 21 

The "eternity of body" which Spinoza delights to recite, be- 
comes now a usable notion. 22 It is not a theoretical concept, like 
those which the Scholastics constructed with infinite care and 
relish, in this case conspiring to bring against our author the 

19 V,34, Sch. 

20 Cf. Hobhouse, Mind in Evolution, pg. 321, for a similar view. 

21 For this argument, cf, II, 13, 15, 22, 48, Sch., and 49, C. and Dem. 
33 Cf. V, 22, 29 and Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 79 

charge of being a Realist. It is a distinct and practical factor 
in psychology. If intellect were unable to conceive the functions 
of body in their general relations it would never be fit to reach 
any conclusions as to the nature and laws of natural forces. All 
knowledge is communicated by the avenues of sense. 23 If that 
knowledge be nothing but an array of perceptual images, the 
human observer would be as helpless as his brute companion to 
tell what these things meant. For we read that the sensory im- 
pression does not offer complete information as to the nature of 
the stimulating object, 24 and again, that each individual percept 
fails to reveal the powers of the sense excited, certainly not the 
compass of the body's powers. 25 The act of intellect which or- 
ganizes percepts into a conceptual system is the first attempt in 
organic history to arrive at the meaning of sensation. Such a 
process must begin with the sensory organs and end with them, 
all our observations being colored by the media of transmission. 26 
Hence, it is entirely proper to hold that the privilege of making 
and applying the categories of thought to experience in the world 
of mechanism belongs to the human mind, because it alone has 
learned to read the universal properties of sensation. 27 Hence, 
too, the Self which emerges from the flow of correlated ideas 
deals expressly with the eternal qualities whose visible embodi- 
ment is found in a given individual. 

Let us not suppose, however, that Selfhood is a barren ab- 
straction, like the justice of Nominalism, or the pale, ungrasped 
Noumenon of a later philosophy. The self, being inextricably 
bound up with life, the nidus of active forces, must faithfully 
register the movements of the body. Thus, the child begins his 
career by an unreasoned obedience to primary instincts, the satis- 
faction of which depends almost exclusively on external causes. 
He is scarcely conscious of himself or his surroundings. But in 
normal instances growth is steady and progressive. Mind un- 
folds along with the capacity of sense. Education sets it as the 
supreme end to "educe," to draw out the powers latent in the 
child's nature,^ — to train eye and ear and touch, relate their 

" II, 26. 2S II, 27. " V, 29, Dem. 

* II, 25. M II, 17, Sch. 



8o JAMES H. DUNHAM 

percepts to a common scheme of knowledge, and at length make 
the grown man an independent self. 28 Because in this or that 
body, at an early age, an intelligent whole is clearly denned, 
Spinoza has no trouble in ascribing to each body an "eternal" 
nature. 29 He must mean by that just one thing: that amid the 
crush and entanglement of sense-perceptions the self which 
catches up the common element in each percept sees also the 
meaning of the act, finds this fitting harmoniously into a scheme 
of conduct, and relates all acts at length to a definite end. Thus 
intellect makes good its superiority to imagination and memory, 
both of which have a place in all organic experience without 
being correlated under the principle of a presiding self. 30 And it 
makes good its superiority by defining the residual scope of 
sense-perception. The self, in other words, is not concerned 
ultimately with the gratification of sense, but with the cordial 
participation in those high thoughts which link man's destiny 
with the destiny of the world. 31 This is Spinoza's doctrine of 
personality. Let us proceed to a closer examination of its terms. 

Ill 

The awakening of selfhood is not a sudden attainment. Those 
who have arrived at a mature estimate of themselves know at 
what great cost the goal has been won. The growth of self- 
distinguishing thought is just as regular and just as slow as the 
growth of a bodily organ. Certain organic instincts like the 
sex-impulse do not assert their power until the body has reached 
a fixed development; yet all the previous life has been training- 
ground for their particular function. Likewise, the first glint 
of self-consciousness appears at a recognized period, the exact 
moment however being beyond the ken of the observer. But 
when physical impulse or mental discrimination emerges, it 
marks a new stage in the individual's career. It is, as Spinoza 
says, a new perfection, a new level of reality. 32 It would be a 
faulty reading of the values of intellect, to study them only in 
the developed consciousness of the grown man. The mind is an 

28 V, 39, Sch. *V, 40, C. S2 IV, Pref. 

29 V, 22. a V, 20, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 81 

enlarging vista, so to speak. We must study it from its begin- 
ning. If we would "better understand and more easily explain 
it," we should consider its form when it had just caught the first 
swift, startling glimpse of universal properties, — the mind's 
unique privilege. The initial perfection of selfhood is registered 
here. The meaning of "eternity" is for the first time articulately 
framed. 33 The infant mind possesses a reality quite its own. 
It would be an assumption of defect in nature to pity the child 
because in his tender years speech and reason and logical insight 
are denied. His primitive gains are the certificate of a larger 
reality yet to be unfolded. Given health, and length of days, he 
will assume the graduated perfections of human life, — ado- 
lescence, youth, manly vigor and the wisdom of age. Poten- 
tially, the last is included in the first; hence the essence of the 
individual never changes, though the power of action develops. 
Hence, too, the freedom of the adult self is amply guaranteed, 
because we have carried our knowledge of its real capacity back 
to its primary expression. 34 

Having taken our stand at the fountain-head of a man's 
career, what do we find to be the germinal marks of the conscious 
Self ? There can be no doubt as to the fact of self-consciousness. 
Whatever the origin of his experience, a man is sure that is he 
himself, an identical person, who sees and hears and understands. 
Uncritical opinion endows him with an untrammeled initiative, 
so that his every act is held to be the output of free deliberation. 35 
The mistake lies in the definition of freedom. The intellect is 
free in precisely the same way as any other organic impulse ; it is 
free to realize its purpose. 36 Hence, we cannot understand the 
scope of man's freedom until we ascertain how the particular im- 
pulse which makes ftim a man, comes to its focus. 

The self does not become conscious by the registering of a 
sensory image. True, the percept corresponding point by point 
with the changes oTbody is not an inert something, unresponsive 
like a picture on a panel. It surges with life, with the energy 
of organic growth. It involves an active endeavor in the direc- 

33 V, 31, Sch. "HI, 2, ISch. 

34 V, 6, Sch. 3a IV, 26. 



82 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

tion of the object perceived. It is the work of a mind which is 
able to correlate its several tendencies by one commanding prin- 
ciple, but which must first gather up the data for the intellectual 
principle to set its impress upon. This means that the mind is. 
sure of the thing as well as of the sensory image, but only in the 
same way as the mind of the child is sure of the cause of its 
motor-reflexes, or the mind of a dog of the object of its memory- 
impressions. The judgment is purely perceptual. 37 As a judg- 
ment of sense it is unqualifiedly true, and no observer can dispute 
it. But as a judgment of ultimate fact it is open to a hundred 
objections, and can be justified solely by applying the next func- 
tion in the critical operation of mind, viz., that of comparison. 38 
Hence, getting an "idea" exactly agreeable to its stimulating ob- 
ject can never be a test of selfhood; but getting the habit of 
relating such "ideas" to a common principle sets a man on the 
way to winning his intellectual autonomy, the power to identify 
experience as his own. 

"Modes of thinking such as love and desire can have no ob- 
jective validity unless there be in the individual an idea of the 
thing loved or desired." 39 By this Axiom two elements are re- 
quired for the complex of consciousness, the instinctive nature 
of the agent and the image of a stimulating object. But if we 
stopped there, the psychic experience of dog or man would be 
hopelessly monotonous. It would not be experience, it would be 
a succession of reactive points. But experience never stops 
there; the aggressive nature of the organism makes a halt im- 
possible. In a twinkling of an eye there will be two conscious 
events. So far as we are at liberty to guess, for the dog each 
event will be related to its successor as structural neighbors in 
the nerve tract, — hence as necessary constituents of memory. 40 
For the man the relation becomes unique. For example, one 
stimulus produces pain, another pleasure. The dog winces and 
barks; the man by his superior impulse notes the change from 
one level of feeling to another. Pain to him is evil, and he avoids 
its cause. Pleasure is good, and he cultivates every occasion that 

37 II, 43, Sell. 39 II, Ax. 3. 

38 Cf. IV, i, Sch. » II, 18, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 83 

can create it. 41 Intellect thus carries us away from the succession 
of sensory shocks to the thing which is common to all. "We 
know nothing to be certainly good save such things as really 
conduce to understanding." 42 That is to say, the moment I can 
declare that two experiences have in common the physical con- 
dition known as gratification, that moment I have said, in germ 
if not in term, that I who register these feelings am an identical 
person. 

The essence or self of man now rises permanently above the 
surface. He is no longer the sport of unresisted reactions. 43 He 
can catalogue, he can categorize them ; he can arrange them in 
an intellectual order. 44 He can call them his own, and by study- 
ing their effect upon his feelings, trace them to their cause. 
Hence, the freedom of the awakened child is a thousand-fold 
greater than the freedom of the most powerful animal, just be- 
cause he has begun in never so rudimentary a way to ascertain 
what is good for him. For of all the conscious organisms in the 
world, the human mind alone is able to hold before its grasp in 
a definitive manner the end to be sought. The second element, 
then, in the correlation of Self is a comparing of experience with 
a purpose in view. But that purpose cannot be subserved by 
conformity to emotional instincts. If that were so, man after all 
would have in his career nothing unique. But he has something 
distinctive ; he can think, frame concepts, assess the value of sen- 
sations. If his self-conscious thought be not devoted to the 
husbanding of his intellectual resources, he has defaulted his 
peculiar purpose and stripped himself of his rightful heritage. 45 
In order that this may not happen we endeavor to cause the child 
to think for himself, to prescribe such teleological formulas as 
will at length make him master of his career. This is the busi- 
ness of education. When mastery is attained, whether at the 
start or in the mature triumphs of will, the self will discover a 
feeling of elation called self-approval, the knowledge that we 
have seen the multiplicity of sense-perceptions in their true 
light. 46 

41 IV, 8, 19. " IV, 23. " IV, App. 5. 

"IV, 27. "V, 10. "IV, 52; V, 39, Sch. 



84 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

But if the Self conceives a definite goal, what assurance have 
we that when it is reached it can be suitably identified as the 
self's own? The answer to this question will reveal a third 
aspect of self-consciousness, viz., its continuity. If we were 
dealing with the modes of characterization which we discussed in 
a previous chapter, we should despair of ever ascribing to them 
the logical category of sameness. They are not the same; the 
individual changes with every breath he draws, and this very 
changefulness limits his freedom to the type-purposes which 
crown his life. Selfhood, however, is not measured by the co- 
ordinates of space and time, but by the essence belonging to the 
individual organism in every phase of its growth. 47 In the 
sphere of intellect the real element is the principle of selfhood, 
which binds all sensory experience into a unity. The self is 
forced to stand over against the mass of characterized emotions ; 
they are the tokens of appearance, it is the essence of man. The 
distinction is fundamental to Spinoza's psychology and shows 
how deeply he entered into the practical life of the race. 

Communications of sense are never reliable. They reflect, as 
we have seen, the momentary attitude of the percipient. Thus, 
if I affirm that the sun is two hundred feet away from my point 
of vision, I am giving only the apparent measure. All objects 
more than two hundred feet away seem to us removed an equal 
distance, and all in the same plane. The distance from earth to 
sun is not a subject of perceptual judgment; it exceeds our 
powers and is to be determined by computation. Not the casual 
observer, but the skilled scientist must reckon up orbit and paral- 
lax and set down the exact result. 48 

Now it is this observing self, the self that is carried along 
from one observation to another and from one group of mathe- 
matical figures to another, — it is this continuous self which pos- 
sesses reality. We must be extremely careful not to confuse it 
with the individual at a particular moment of his career. If we 
do, we break the continuity and destroy the principle of union. 
Hence, the self should never be invested with such relative terms 
as good or bad. They belong to man as an individual, not as a 

"V, 23, 'Sch. 48 IV, Def. vi, Remark; 1, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 85 

"thinking mode," universalizing the judgments of sense. Even 
on the level of commonplace reactions the terms are variable in 
value. For example, music is good for the victim of melan- 
cholia, bad for the soul sunk in grief, and of no worth whatso- 
ever to a man bereft of hearing. In so far as these terms refer 
to the condition of body there is a manifest propriety in using 
them; but when applied to the correlated experience of the self 
they lose their meaning. For the self does not deal with the 
body as temporarily affected, but with its essential powers. Yet 
while we may not bring the specific differentials of feeling to 
the contemplation of self, we may fittingly frame a type (ex- 
emplar) of character composed of qualities which the self has 
distilled from its contact with nature, or by an analysis of its 
own thought, and set it before our eyes as the self's crystallized 
objective, the guarantor of ultimate freedom. 49 To reach it, 
the consciousness of self must grow increasingly acute; the con- 
ceiving subject must ever more vigorously discriminate the ob- 
jects of its thought from itself and hold its own by choice and 
initiative in face of the clamorous demands of sense-perception. 
That is to say, a struggle must ensue, parallel to that which we 
have designated as the emotional dialectic, There it was an in- 
dividual impulse that provoked the contest; here intelligence, 
man's unique purpose, seeks the steady formulation of all im- 
pulses into a self. 50 

"TV, Pref. »C/. V, 31, Sch. and 40. 



CHAPTER V 

THE REALIZATION OF SELF 
2. The Mode of Development 

The dialectic of self-realization may be said to have three 
phases, the first psychological, the development of man as a 
separate self; the second ethical, his contact with other selves; 
the last religious, his relations to the universal idea of nature. 
These three phases are not mutually exclusive. Type of civili- 
zation, immediate environment, physical capacity, peculiar genius 
may strangely mingle and confuse the several forms of mental 
life; but whether mingled or consecutive we shall not mistake in 
marking them as Spinoza's landing-places in the progressive 
attainment of selfhood. 

I 

The initial duty of the conscious self is to study the meaning 
of the body's reactions, with a view to making them serve the 
self's best interests. 1 The meaning- of every reaction, as we 
have noted, is gauged in part by the nature of the stimulating 
object; but only in part, inasmuch as no single image can carry a 
complete summary of the parts and relations of the object mir- 
rored. 2 We must effect a comparison of several reactions either 
to the same or related stimuli. The rudimentary act which awoke 
the consciousness of self is thus the prototype of the settled 
practice of reflection. Each sensation must be carefully examined 
for its general properties. 3 Why did this impulse suddenly 
function, what was the nature of the stimulating cause, under 
what circumstances will a given stimulus provoke its response, — 
these and similar questions are the burden of study. Just as 
soon as we embark on this process we begin to gain "adequate 
ideas," we begin to understand. 4 By the same operation, too, we 

J IV, 53, Dem. S V, 4. 

2 II, 25; cf. IV, s. 4 IV, 23. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 87 

enter upon a new level of freedom. When intelligence first 
wrought its impressions into the integument of a self, man won 
his right to a higher freedom than the mere functional activity 
of the lower organisms. Now he is in position to determine the 
cause of his sensory experience and at his own option "perform 
those actions which he knows to be of the highest value in life." 
He has reached the second form of knowledge, sharply distin- 
guished by Spinoza from the first form, or opinion, which ac- 
cepts the casual percepts as sufficient witness and never asks 
whether the concept deduced is universally true. Opinion may 
at times hit upon the correct solution to a problem, as when a 
tradesman by habit or early training puts down on paper the 
fourth proportional without knowing why it is the true figure. 
But the universal value of the solution can only be reached when, 
like the mathematician acting on the basic law of proportion, 
we understand that the product of the extremes equals the 
product of the means. 5 All which means to imply that the 
ignorant man, following his opinion or the crystallized habit of 
society, is a slave, as compared with the man who boldly acts 
with a full knowledge of impending results. 6 

That the first assertion of self-consciousness is not immedi- 
ately attended by such an access of freedom, is proven by a 
variety of facts. 7 We may cite the edict of reflection that all 
events in the life of man are necessary. Much of the mental 
suffering of the world would be averted if we knew that the 
object lost could not by any device have been preserved. 8 The 
customary reaction to loss is pain, — severe disappointment, bit- 
ter complaint, and a tendency to query how with 'an assumed 
benevolent Creator things have grown "corrupt to the point of 
putrescence, repulsive deformity, confusion, evil and sin." In 
answer to this it is not difficult to show that the perfection of 
things depends on their nature and their relation to the totality 
of being, and that they are not more or less perfect according as 
the individual observer finds them grateful or repugnant to his 

*Cf. De Emend. Intel., pg. 9. 8 V, 6 and Sch. 

e IV, 56, Sch. 

7 Cf. Spinoza's complaint in IV, 35, Sch. 



88 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

tastes. 9 Pain itself, though it takes its meaning from organic 
properties and not from the laws of mechanism, must yet have 
its place in the necessary operation of natural forces. It is not 
a stranger, drawn into the pleasurable movements of the world; 
it is here by right; it has a distinct service to perform. When 
so viewed the offices of pain — disease of body, disorders of 
mind, poverty, injustice, war, hidden and malefic craft' — are di- 
vested of their obnoxious garb. They are not the creatures of 
man's unaided whim; they are not contingent, nor can they be 
averted; they are necessary. Their universal meaning becomes 
sun-clear to the mind, their causes defined, and their issues fore- 
seen. 10 Hence, pain as a psychic reaction is at once turned into 
pleasure, and the idea that God could be the Author of evil is 
forever banished. 11 

A similar change of attitude takes place in our view of evil 
which has overtaken another being conceived to be like our- 
selves. The common reaction is called Pity, and assumes that 
if circumstances had been different, joy and not misery would 
have crowned - his life. On nearer consideration, however, it 
appears that the impulse of pity cannot be embodied in rational 
conduct. Pity implies that something is wrong- with the structure 
of the world; that certain events might and should have hap- 
pened otherwise. Reflection, on the other hand, having gath- 
ered up the essential properties of given objects, assures us 
peremptorily that all events transpire according to a fixed law of 
succession. There is nothing accidental; what appears so is the 
deduction of an unfurnished mind. Pity, therefore, has no 
point at which it may crystallize. 12 Nor is this all. The effect 
of such reaction upon the mind is distinctly bad. It not only 
forces upon us a feeling of depression because we conceive the 
object of pity as in a state of anguish, 13 but it leads us to actions 
which afterwards we have grave cause to regret. Every impulse 
that bids us help another is emphatically the voice of reason and 
has official standing in the career of the Self. 14 Yet it may be 
misguided either by the natural rush of emotion or by the fact 

9 1, App., sub fin. U V, 18, Sch. "Ill, 27. 

10 Cf. I, 33 and Sch. i. 12 IV, 50, and Sch. M iIV, 37- 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 89 

that we are easily deceived by false tears. The man who would 
conform to the terms of genuine sympathy must be careful to 
analyze both the character of his sentiments and the external 
incident which evoked them at the particular moment. If he 
fails to do so, the pain of pity will be re-inforced by the pain of 
chagrin, and the development of the real Self will be measurably 
hindered. 15 

Again, the reaction of Fear is driven by reflection from its 
prominent place in the emotional history of man. Instinct leads 
every organism to seek escape from danger or to avoid its very 
appearance. The wise man, that is to say, the agent who has 
balanced his impulse and action so as to realize the highest val- 
ues of selfhood, will not scruple to decline the path of peril ; for 
it is perfectly apparent to him that foolhardiness, being a de- 
structive impulse, ranks on an equality with the sense of danger 
as respects its emotional results. Both bear the seeds of pain. 16 
Hence, to decline danger is not in his case to evince fear. Fear 
may be defined as a "wavering pain elicited by the idea of an 
event past or future of whose issue we stand in doubt." 17 But 
uncertainty will not linger in a mind which has grown ac- 
customed to correlating all its reactions under the rubric of a 
Self. It knows not by instinct, but as the reasoned result of ex- 
perience, that fear may be conquered by anticipating and ex- 
amining its causes, and by devising certain rules of conduct to 
be resolutely applied in times of need. Selfhood for the moment 
is synonymous with courage. 18 

The thought of death institutes the most violent reaction of 
fear in the uninstructed mind. We have remarked 19 that the 
sick man who has never studied the meaning of physical dis- 
solution undergoes cheerfully the most distasteful treatment for 
the sake of avoiding its issues. 20 He is a slave to the life of 
sense. On the other hand the free man, understanding how such 
dissolution takes place and why, is not concerned with the fact 
itself, but with the kind of a Self that shall have been realized 

15 IV, 50, Sch. 1S IV, 47, Sch.; V, 10, Sch. 

19 IV, 69. M Page 56. 

17 III, Def. Emots. xiii. » IV, 63, Sch. 



po JAMES H. DUNHAM 

when Death at length comes. 21 For death as a biological fact 
is hurtful only when we have failed to seize every opportunity 
for developing the powers inherent in mind. Common opinion 
regards the death of a child as the cause of much unhappiness, 
and hails every man as the beneficiary of fortune if long life 
cum sana mente in corpore sano be granted him. But length of 
days is not the true test of the self's efficiency. If infancy ex- 
cludes the principle of correlation as a mental attainment, old age 
often reveals its decisive impairment. Moreover, one man whose 
life is measured by a short span may have reached a far richer 
acquaintance with the meaning of his emotional contacts than 
another who at the turn of fourscore years is still the servant of 
organic appetite. 22 To define clearly the purpose of our career, 
and to determine how every sensory impression and the con- 
ceptual judgment that results can ultimately subserve that end, — 
this alone will abolish the reaction of fear in face of death. 

We thus reach the verdict that in the broader sphere of self- 
realization as well as in the primary act of self-consciousness it 
is necessary to have a definite idea of the end-in-view. Under 
what terms does Spinoza conceive it? The endeavor of every 
organism is the maintenance of its integrity. So long as the 
endeavor deals with the processes of body it is entirely instinc-t 
tive. The end is recognized after the functions of the bodily 
organs have been discharged. A new aspect of the end-in-view 
appears when the correlating principle of mind begins the forma- 
tion of a Self. The Self looks to an end, in the course of time 
constructs for it a precise background, and eventually makes a 
consistent effort to realize it. The difference between end-in- 
view for man and end for animal is abysmal. It celebrates the 
sweep of freedom which has come to conscious life. Man is not 
only free to follow his organic purpose; he is free to frame a 
line of conduct that shall bring his intellectual powers to their 
highest development. 23 

The complete end of self, we submit, can never be fulfilled ; it 
is a limiting concept. Yet we should carefully state it, so as to 

21 IV, 67. ~Cf. IV, 26; V, 25. 

22 V, 38 and Sch.; 39, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 91 

have a standard of comparison. Scientific pedagogy recognizes 
a concrete terminus ad quern, viz., the training of the child's 
nature so that his sensory experience shall be as wide and com- 
plex as possible, and his mental grasp all-inclusive. 24 Such an 
ideal stands as the goal of every career. It reduces to a minimum 
the undisputed play of percept and image-association, and exalts 
the authority of intellect over both through the detection of 
governing laws. If the agent could rise to a perfect understand- 
ing of himself and the world he would lay hold upon the third 
and most effective type of knowledge, Intuition, the ability to 
see a thing auf einem Blicke, as Fichte says. 25 Yet even though 
we cannot reach the goal we are involved in an increasingly 
energetic struggle in its direction. Every new reaction is an 
opportunity for testing the value of the ideal, and at the same 
time each successive interpretation of the single reaction makes 
the ideal clearer to the eye. 26 

But the self-purpose does not remain submerged in the neces- 
sarily shadowy terms of a limiting concept. It is not merely a 
hope; it is a present power. 27 Self-consciousness grows like the 
organism it interprets; and just as the organic functions never 
have a chance to display their full possibilities, so the self never 
reaches the pinnacle of its maturity. Nevertheless, whatever its 
stage of development, it is continually absorbing the common 
elements of its environment, which alone insure both the under- 
standing and the attainment of the Good. 28 

Of no other contact is this so inevitably true as in man's 
reaction upon his fellows. We have found that a mind does 
not wait for the touch and friction of other minds in order to 
become aware of its self-correlating tendency. The awaking of 
self is distinctly a private concern. Still the values which very 
early in life we begin to associate with the self are powerfully 
brought to sight through the appreciation of the points held in 
common with other-selves. Hence, Spinoza is justified in his 
contention that a "man can neither be nor be conceived without 

34 V, 39, Sch. 27 V, 20, Sch. 2S IV, 31. 

25 Wissenschaftslehre, 1801, Teil. I, sect. I. 
■ M Cf. V, 40. 



92 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

the power of taking delight in the highest good" of mankind in 
general. 29 The simple biological fact affords sufficient basis for 
the remark; for man comes into existence by the laws of physical 
generation; he is not dropped full-grown from the skies. The 
verdict of psychology is every bit as clear: Deny man a com- 
panion, and you make it impossible for him to unfold the idea 
of self, which the first glint of consciousness has disclosed. 

How comprehensive a role in human life this reaction plays 
may be discerned by studying a familiar reaction to social stimuli. 
Pride is defined as a man's love of self, which puts too high an 
estimate on his own powers. 30 Now except as a theoretical 
concept, pride can have no standing in the history of mind apart 
from empirical contact with other minds. Pride in this sense 
becomes a pleasurable emotion issuing from a false opinion 
which affirms one man's superiority to his neighbor. 31 If the 
way were open and we took the trouble to find it, we might learn 
both the state of our own mind and the approximate capacity of 
our neighbor's ; a comparison of which would give the exact 
degree of difference and eliminate every emotion save that of 
gratitude for our united attainments, however little they might 
be. Thus the sensory contact, producing in the framing of 
character a homogeneity of impressions, that is, an opinion, 
effects now a reference of current experiences to the end-in- 
view, the building of a Self whose properties are shared by every 
other being of the same grade. Human behavior is not restricted 
to the response excited by inanimate nature or the motions of the 
subordinate organisms. If it were, the area of thought would 
be small, and the texture of language extremely rudimentary. 
That man may slowly but surely ascend in "his enjoyment of his 
rational life" is due solely to the impact of other reflective minds 
upon his own. 32 The Self is therefore not a whole sine plexu, 
but a swirling current within whose bounds a thousand human 
tributaries are incessantly mingling. And the destiny of the 
Self, being common to the race, is illuminated by the triumphs 
of reason and skill, gleaming from the history of other gener- 

29 IV, 36, Sch. » IV, 57, Sch. 

30 III, Def. Emots. xxviii. "IV, App. g. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 93 

ations and full of promise for our own impending achieve- 
ments. 33 

Such being the terminus of the dialectic of self-realization, 
what, we ask, are the notes of progress in the ascending series? 
We observe at once that proficiency in recognising an object indi- 
cates the grade of self-discrimination. A given manifold (to use 
the vernacular of a later school), say, a flower, is framed by the 
triplicate action of sight and smell and touch and is then anal- 
yzed into its specific categorical qualities. This is what Spinoza 
terms the capacity for "understanding many things simultan- 
eously." 34 The image of the flower, the flower-concept, becomes 
fixed in the observer's consciousness by repeated contact with its 
various embodiments, and in many a life plays a conspicuous 
part as the subject of phrase and fancy. 35 That is to say, recog- 
nition is not alone recognition of the objective data; it is a tacit, 
as yet inarticulate affirmation of Selfhood. 36 It enables the agent 
to separate his emotional inclination, e.g., admiration for flowers, 
from the thought of an external cause, e.g., the particular rose, 
and range it among the tried and proven aesthetic judgments of 
the race. 37 Such an emotion grows stronger with the widening 
of aesthetic experience, or as Spinoza says, "in proportion to the 
number of simultaneous concurrent causes exciting it." 38 And 
every access of strength to the judgment renders the agent more 
convinced both of his authority as a conceptual thinker, and of 
his selective freedom amid the mass of unrelated reactions. 

Not different in principle but exceedingly more intricate in 
structure is the scheme of conduct, which coordinates spasmodic 
feelings under a common rubric. Conduct proceeds upon a 
precarious basis if we act only in order to escape an ill. Con- 
duct must be positive; it must aim at a good. 39 What, for 
instance, should be our attitude towards Fame? Construing it 
negatively, we might cite its misuse, its vanity, the perfidious 
applause of the crowd. That is the view of the disappointed 

33 Cf. V, 20, Sch. " Cf. V, 29, Dem. " V, 8. 

34 IV, 45, Sch. " V, 4, Sch. ■ IV, 63, Cor. 

85 Cf. V, n. 



94 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

candidate, who flaunts it in the face of his contemporaries as 
evidence of his searching knowledge of the world. But the 
issue of his invective proves how meagrely he understands the 
progress of his spiritual dialectic. For in his case each separate 
quest for fame is a reaction to an ephemeral stimulus; it is not 
coordinated to any intelligible rule of action; it is merely the 
output of sensuous impulse. Hence, ambition cannot remain a 
permanent factor in his career ; it will be superseded by vehement 
anger, malicious insinuation, and ultimate despair. The proper 
values of selfhood are miserably obscured. 

Profoundly antagonistic to this attitude is the course of the 
man who attempts to correlate kindred reactions into a definite 
scheme of conduct. The many and varied occasions leading to 
the pursuit of fame are interpreted by a single aim. In that 
way alone can he assert his primordial right and deepen his 
consciousness of freedom. 40 Therefore, he is careful to esti- 
mate the psychological uses of fame, the objects of quest, and 
the proper means for procuring them, and to assess the value 
of each new experience on the basis of that judgment. If the 
currents of life be conflicting or the principle of selfhood as yet 
ineffectually applied, he may turn the abstract rule into a group 
of precepts, commit them to memory, and in the event of an 
emergency summon them to hand one by one for instant service. 
Thus, recognizing an emotion will be the same as recognizing 
the presence of self; the keener and more comprehensive the 
reaction, the greater our progress in understanding the funda- 
mental purpose of mind. 41 

A second note of progress is found in the self's relation to 
Time. Mind by its very nature must grow. If it halt, if it 
stagnate, selfhood is obscured and may become extinct. Idiocy 
is not the equivalent of personality. Now growth requires time. 
Hence, the development of self must be reckoned among the 
phenomena of a temporal experience. Nevertheless, man as a 
person is not in time in the same way that man as an individual 
is. The individual varies from moment to moment; the self 
abides the same, being the correlating principle which alone ex- 
"V, 9. "V, 10, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 95 

plains the otherwise disjointed and unmeaning organic events. 
The self is always present, the permanent repository of all those 
properties that go to the making of a man. 42 

That it is the same continuous self which coordinates utterly 
diverse reactions is a matter of record. In an unreflective period 
of life, e.g., childhood, impulse asks for immediate satisfaction 
and will not take denial. If of two goods desired both be future, 
the one nearer in time, whatever its possible issues, will be per- 
sistently sought. Even though the issues of a future good be 
fully known, it will be arbitrarily sidetracked in favor of an 
object whose charms are exercising their momentary spell. 43 
These are facts persuasive at once to youth, manhood and old 
age. They affirm inevitably the degree of freedom won or 
lost. They also forecast the difficulties attending the self's 
struggle to unfold its virtues. So long as sensuous impressions 
shape their career, men are the abject servants of Time. But 
when the awaking mind correlates events present, past and fu- 
ture under some common schedule of conduct, then the freedom 
of selfhood begins to emerge. Thus, the value of a good depends 
not on the moment of its enjoyment, but upon its essential char- 
acter. If the present gratifications be agreeable while the remote 
effects are subversive of bodily health, the calculus of reflective 
psychology waives the element of time and pronounces the 
course contrary to nature. That is to say, we seek the greater 
good of the future in preference to the lesser good of the present, 
or a lesser evil of the present which leads to a definite good of 
the future; because the interests of self prescribe not an isolated 
pleasure here and there but a sustained and ultimate benison, 
known as harmony of mind. 44 The progress of self, it follows 
from this, proceeds by time-obliterating steps and clinches its 
indigenous powers by subduing refractory emotions to the set- 
tled scheme of life. 45 

Yet just here a ^caution must be entered. For unreflective 
behavior often reveals an apparent observance of the same law, 
viz., denial of present good for the sake of future reward. Thus, 

42 Cf. V, 7, Dem. "IV, 6o, Cor.; 62; 76 and Cor. 

43 IV, 9, 10, 16. "V, 7, Dem. 



96 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

many men believe that piety and religion are burdens to be reso- 
lutely borne, in order either to escape horrible penalties after 
death or to gain celestial emoluments of service. They balance 
present evils against future good or greater future ills. Time is 
insidiously eliminated from the account and a calculus of good 
effected. The error is due to a defective psychology. The mind 
is subject to development only as an interpretation of the body's 
reactions. Hence, conditions after death cannot be compared 
with experience in life. If superstitious believers were deprived 
of this comparison, they would see no incentive in the doctrine 
of rewards and would return precipitately to their own lusts. 
For the driving force with them is not the harmonious unfolding 
of natural powers. They are as illogical in their attitude as one 
who proposed to abandon the rational life altogether in case he 
found the mind to cease at the body's dissolution. The true 
standard of judgment is not an ideal furnished by another world. 
It must be expressed in empirical terms or not at all. To balance 
real evils against a purely hypothetical good is unscientific and 
proves that unreflecting fancy has copied the rule of reason in 
vain. 46 

The third mark of progress lies in the gratification incident 
to each advance in the self's control of its experience. We must 
observe the psychological order of events, — followed in Spin- 
oza's "Ethics" as strictly as in the most systematic modern 
handbook. The organic impulse, developing as emotion in the 
higher life of man, reacts upon its environment, correlates its 
mental impressions and records a change in the actual state 
(perfectio) of body. The value of the change he terms plea- 
sure. 47 Just as the whole body acts in the functioning of any 
appetite, so the whole self undergoes change with every cor- 
related response. 48 If then we would learn whether the self is 
becoming properly conscious of its powers, we must consult the 
kind and degree of exhilaration following upon the heels of a 
given reaction. "Joy," says the author, "arises from the true 
apprehension of our virtues and their causes." 49 Change of feel- 

48 V, 41, Sch. 4S IV, 60. 

47 III, 53; Def. Emot. ii. 49 V, io 3 Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 97 

ing is instinctively associated with the idea of personal pro- 
prietorship. It is we who change; it is we who contemplate the 
change and are able to calculate its differentials. 50 Hence, it is 
we who can tell, sometimes in precise terms, how substantial is 
the progress effected by a rare experience. 51 We have noted 
the diversity between the pleasures of sensual indulgence and the 
elation of philosophic thought. 52 That was a comparison in the 
career of individuals. Here we study the conquests of growing 
personality. If the understanding becomes distinct in proportion 
to our ability to categorize experience and gradually do away 
with the confirmatory evidence of sense, 53 surely the agent's 
"joy" must needs register a parallel advance. Thus, the 
geometer who takes delight in drawing figures moves a definite 
pace forward when he ascertains, say, the principle of a circle, 
that if two straight lines intersect within it the rectangles formed 
by their segments will be equal to one another. He will advance 
another step in mental satisfaction when he grasps the fact that 
the principle cited is objectively true whether the actual figure 
be traced or not. A supreme joy will gird his soul if out of 
such a splendid principle a great discovery like the law of gravi- 
tation should issue. 54 In every case the gratification is not an 
impersonal event, shut off from the currents of life by abstract 
interpretation. It is "accompanied by the idea of the agent and 
his virtue," a sure result of the functioning of self-purpose. It 
foreshadows the limiting concept, which stands at the end of the 
intellectual dialectic and is called by Spinoza "blessedness," the 
highest possible contentment. 55 

A practical test of the degree of gratification reached is found 
in the exclusion of excess from the course of self-realization. 
Excess means the disturbance of the organic equilibrium by an 
over-emphasis on one feeling. For instance, derision is the form 
of laughter which selects and pillories a moral quality which we 
despise in an object which we hate. 56 The generic impulse, 

110 III, Def. Emot. xxv. ° 3 Cf. sup. pg. 52. 

"IV, App. xxxi. 53 II, 13, Sch. 

54 Cf. II, 8, Sch., for illustration in a totally different setting. 
06 V, 27, Dem. "HI, Def. Emot. xi. 



98 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

laughter, being an offshoot of cheerfulness, is symptomatic of a 
healthy body and a sound mind and should always be cultivated. 57 
As a sign of the superb joy of living it cannot be excessive; for 
it expresses the Self in its unmixed properties; and if the emo- 
tion were to transgress its own bounds it would at the same 
time exact more from the self than Nature had made possible. 58 
Hence, emotion when pure is steady, but emotion when linked 
with baser passion, like hate, tends to engage the mind's attention 
to the retirement of all nobler thoughts. 59 Certain definite re- 
sults, such as spiritual inertia and sinister suspicion, can be 
traced directly to emotional excess; and their very diversity, 
malignity and widespread contagion prove how little they are 
under our command. 60 It is the business of the developing self, 
then, to cleanse its emotions of extraneous elements and to guard 
most vigilantly against the reappearance of every excluded habit. 
In this sphere it is only too true that vigilance is the price of 
liberty. 61 Our success as responsible sentinels will be attested by 
a change both in the outward effects of our action, and in the 
inward peace. Hatred with its attendant discords must inev- 
itably give place to a genuine sympathy for our kind, which in a 
man's private psychology will serve to redress the balance of 
thought and enlarge the power of choice. 

II 

The second aspect of self-conscious development is ethical. 
It considers man as fitted into the framework of society. It 
affirms that the gregarious instinct, so pronounced in the con- 
struction of character, has its roots deep in the unique purpose 
of the race. It takes man out of the exclusion of self and plants 
his life in the soil of humanity. We have hitherto conceived 
him as possessing gifts, properties, powers; now we must de- 
scribe him as the depositary of obligations. Heretofore, a multi- 
tude of impressions have thronged through his senses, tending 
to confirm his judgment of separateness ; now from his garnished 
mind pours out a stream of desires whose destination is the heart 

67 IV, 42, 45, Sch. 59 IV, 6. n IV, App. xxx. 

58 IV, 61. W V, 20, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 99 

of another moral being. The horizon of self is indefinitely ex- 
panded. A social consciousness emerges. We are citizens of the 
world. The bodies and minds of individual men have coalesced 
into a "single body and a single mind, and all men with one 
consent seek what is serviceable to all." 62 Thus the mind of 
humanity is not a complex of a million separate minds, but a 
definite consciousness, growing ever more clear with the prog- 
ress of reflective civilization. Such is the hope which sweeps the 
fancy of our philosopher. We proceed to examine the several 
points that bring it within the range of credibility. 

The ethical relation is primarily grounded in the nature of 
man. It is not forced upon him by mysterious chance nor medi- 
ated by overwhelming Fate. In the first place the mental equip- 
ment of men is the same. They respond to the same exciting 
causes, and can be affected favorably only by those objects 
which have properties in common with them. 63 They will be 
most favorably affected by individuals whose sum of qualities is 
the same as their own. The only stimulus of which this is 
true is another man. Inferior species have similar organic func- 
tions, but they lack the impulse of reflection, man's distinguishing 
endowment, and as truly a law of his nature as any instinct held 
in common with them. 64 The rational impulse therefore cannot 
be satisfied by commerce with animals. Towards them we exer- 
cise the same rights that they by virtue of their equipment have 
in us, viz., the power of physical control. But since everyone's 
rights are defined by the intrinsic laws of his being, man will 
assume much more sweeping rights over his subordinates. He 
will use them as befits his needs, and neither religious scruple 
nor mawkish sentiment can dispute his mode of treatment. 65 
To satisfy the reflective impulse, however, Nature has provided 
a multitude of kindred minds and ordained that only by the 
union of sexes, both endowed with the principle of intelligence, 
could the perpetuity of the race be won. 66 Such minds are 
capable of instituting fellowship quite out of keeping with the 

62 IV, i8, Sch. "IV, 37, Sch. i. 

• IV, 29. m IV, 68, Sch. ; App. 20. 

64 IV, 35, Cor. i; cf. Ill, 49, Sch. 



ioo JAMES H. DUNHAM 

impact of simpler organic tendencies. They can organize an 
exchange of ideas through articulate symbols, an indisputable 
evidence of reflection, and thereby understand one another's 
needs and together develop their distinctive purpose. 67 

To the parity of nature we must next add the community of 
end; their destiny is the same. We have defined the goal of the 
self's private endeavor and discovered that it is implicated in 
the nature of mind. But one self is typical of every other. 
What belongs to the first must find its secure place in the second, 
the third, and each succeeding self to the end of time. To rob 
one man of the end ascribed to another would be equivalent to 
denying him the right of selfhood. 6S The thesis is thus sup- 
ported by a reductio ad impossibile, valid indeed as an argument 
but not practically persuasive. We turn to a more homely, 
albeit effective defense, as suggested by the universalistic aspects 
of hedonism. For every agent by nature seeks his own highest 
good and with every successful attempt advances by a fixed 
degree the command over his own resources. Now if all men 
be involved in the same moral struggle, the interests of each 
individual agent will be proportionately improved. Hence, no 
man can better serve his own ends than by aiding his neighbor 
in a consistent quest for rectitude of life. 69 That nature has 
fashioned minds with genius to fit them for entering such a 
mutually favorable competition, is a plain contradiction of a 
popular, though perverted theory, which holds that to pursue 
one's personal advantage is the "foundation of impiety." 70 There- 
fore, every man as responsible agent must lend his "skill and 
temperament" to the training of his fellows, with a view to 
organizing for them the same scheme of conduct that he has 
consciously conceived for himself. 71 In this way man's private 
desires become synonymous with the wider issues of the race; 
and since private desires born of deep contemplation of the 
self's true nature are always good, it follows that our public 
virtues will exhibit the same standard of excellence; in other 

67 IV, App. 26. TO :IV, 18, Sch. 

88 IV, 36, Sch. 71 IV, App. ix. 

69 IV, 35, Cor. ii ; 37, second Dem. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 101 

words, that justice, fidelity and benevolence will surely 
prevail. 72 

Given these two facts organic to the life of man, what has 
been their effect on the actual movements of society ? The argu- 
ment for social consciousness based on experience is singularly 
convincing. It has a double edge; it states, first, what priva- 
tions men are saved from by association, and secondly, how their 
natural wants are satisfactorily covered. 73 A balance of inter- 
ests proves that the advantage is distinctly on the side of social 
cooperation. For if every man exercised his so-called natural 
rights, he would indiscriminately avenge his private wrongs and 
expend hate and aversion upon all who in any way opposed his 
self-assertions. The result would be confusion, pain and death. 
Hence, such tendencies must somehow be curbed, and the natural 
rights which give warrant to them voluntarily relinquished. But 
the organization of the State is not after all a proscription of 
inherent powers ; it is a definite recognition of man's most funda- 
mental impulse, his desire for life. How can he protect life and 
limb, if on every hand unrestrained enemies are lusting for his 
blood? The principle of surrendering secondary rights in order 
to safeguard the primary purpose is well expressed by Spinoza 
in the words, "Men avoid inflicting injury through fear of re- 
ceiving a greater injury themselves." 74 To save men from the 
dominion of hate by a just regard for the interests of all is the 
unquestioned boon which coalescence in an organized society 
prescribes. It cannot fail to increase the earning power of each 
new moral endeavor. 75 

But important as this phase of the argument is, it must not be 
left to stand alone. In fact, by itself it would be discredited by 
events. For harmony in the social mind, if grounded solely in 
fear, is tenuous and fleeting. Fear, as we have intimated, springs 
always from weakness of spirit. When weakness of a specific 
sort is multiplied in a congeries of minds, the result can be noth- 
ing but weakness. If men entertain a truce solely because of 
their wavering temper, the steadfastness of the convention is 

72 IV, 18, Sch. 74 IV, 37, Sch. ii. 

* IV, 35, Sch. T5 Cf. IV, 46, Sch. 



102 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

precarious to the last degree. 76 To found a state for the de- 
velopment of social life, to establish an arena for the battle of 
ethical principles, the argument must guarantee certain positive 
details. For example, it must insure the cultivation of arts and 
crafts as the legitimate output of the inventive mind of man. 
In all the history of the human race an accepted medium of ex- 
change has been the sheet-anchor of social stability. Anthro- 
pology in its recent inquiries has amply demonstrated what 
Spinoza implied and all economists have dwelt on, vis., that the 
test of organization, the evidence of a common consciousness, is 
revealed with great clearness in the tribe's attitude to barter and 
trade. Just as in untutored society a piece of metal or its 
equivalent evinces one man's readiness to trust his neighbor, so 
in the highly complex system of modern credit the same trait 
appears on a grandiose scale. 77 Again, common consciousness 
feels the inevitable discrepancy between individuals units in 
place, opportunity and equipment. There are numbers of men 
naturally disqualified for service. Individual munificence, how- 
ever great, can not provide for the needs of poverty, distress and 
delinquency. The organized state must do so. It is the trustee 
of the common good, and to its offices all disabled citizens are 
justified in appealing. The governing motive should never be 
that of lordly generosity. Charity is not an emotional senti- 
ment; it is good economic policy. It has "regard for the gen- 
eral advantage." By helping one, the state helps all. 78 Such is the 
breadth of view to which the social consciousness calls us. He 
who enters intelligently into the spirit of mutualism finds him- 
self carried along the course of personal development at an amaz- 
ing speed. Truly the end of all is each man's projected goal. 

The term of the ethical dialectic is now in sight, a civil man- 
hood, so to say, embodying the universalized virtues of the 
single self. By the very nature of the case it can never be fully 
reached; but its several stages will be realized pari passu with 
the realization of the individual series. The process, however, 
is more involved, inasmuch as a multitude of minds meet and 
struggle in the same arena. The persistent interaction of self- 

76 IV, App. 16. " Cf. IV, App. 2%. 7S IV, App. 17. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 103 

empowered agents gives edge and value to the ethical life. Just 
what that interaction is, just how the contest may be successfully 
maintained, is the next point to be determined. 

Moral energies do not spring from the play of unharnessed 
impulses. These by themselves evince no tendency to bind men 
together. The only kind of union implied is that which sub- 
jects the weaker to the forcible dominion of the stronger. Thus,, 
if we study to make other men live according to rules devised by 
ourselves, we are purposely using them for the promotion of our 
own interest. For if they by any hap dispossess us of our 
coveted goods, instantly hate and threats of vengeance ensue. 79 
Plainly, then, at root men cannot be in harmony and still pursue 
the same material end, since one of them must at length lay en- 
gaging hands upon it and wrest it from the other's control. 
Discomfiture and chagrin are the penalties. Not good as the 
particular object of desire, but good as realized by one, and 
denied to the other, is the true index of this state of feeling. 80 
On so divisive a basis a program looking to the formation of 
common obligations cannot be effected. It is this very situation 
which Spinoza conceives as existing in prehistoric times. The 
"state of nature" was a state of discord and despair. Men, 
being a prey to unharnessed appetites, acted always in defiance 
of their neighbor's interests. Hence, no standards of good and 
evil could be framed, since each agent was a law to himself, and 
standards even if set up would be at once in conflict and could 
only be confirmed by force. Moreover, in a state of nature the 
idea of private property is quite unknown. Land and tools are 
held in common, used as each one pleases, and then abandoned. 
It is impossible for a man to perform the most rudimentary duty, 
vis., rendering to another man what rightfully belongs to him. 
In other words, the conceits of Ethics are as yet unframed. 

Ethical interaction cannot depend primarily upon reaction to 
common needs. Erom what then does it derive its impetus? 
Plainly from the same reflective impulse which points the way 
to the evolution of the social consciousness. We must not sup- 
pose however that the organic appetites of body are extinguished 

79 IV, 37, Sch. i. w IV, 34, Sch. 



104 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

by the magic of a word. On the contrary familiar emotions 
once directed to instinctive ends will be illuminated with new 
beauty when wrought upon by a truly moral purpose. Thus 
ambition, which seeks a man's private aggrandisement by absorb- 
ing other interests into his own, is transmuted into an instrument 
of reflection, collating the common habits, rights, duties and 
destinies of mankind into a superior virtue, and clothing it with 
the honored name of Piety. 81 A broader appraisement of Self is 
made in view of its new relations- to other selves. The exertion 
of power formerly confined to its effect upon our own life is 
now judged in a twofold way. No longer alone and irresponsible 
in a stimulating environment, no longer at liberty to make an 
unmixed sense-impact on our fellow, as the lower organism 
does, we are constrained to study his activity in the same man- 
ner in which we studied our own. Perceiving that all mutual 
interests are inextricably mingled, we are bound to treat his needs 
with courteous consideration. If the reflective mind is the only 
power capable of forming friendship, it is the manifest duty of 
him who possesses it to guide his behavior by the rules of 
friendly intercourse. For how, if he does not follow the clear 
tendency of his kind, can he possibly rise to a level of moral ob- 
ligation, where he acts out of due respect to his neighbor's 
interests ? S2 

The trial of strength often comes suddenly, but when it comes 
it reveals the stage of development with unfailing exactness. A 
wrong done, perhaps amid aggravated circumstances, the deep 
hurt to our sensibilities, the festering sore, the smoldering re- 
sentment, the bursting of bonds in flaming anger, — who has not 
passed through spiritual anguish, in which emotions like these 
have crowded thick upon him? Impulse, the handmaid of Hate, 
reigns supreme, and with queenly fury terrorizes the hopes of 
friendship into silence. If ever the "state of nature" has been 
conquered, it returns again with pristine vigor, and woe to the 
mind that dares to challenge the intruder's entry! But the self 
which has already tasted the joys of freedom knows how galling 
the old servitude would be, if revived. Its business therefore is 

81 V, 4, Sch. B IV, 37, Sch. i. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 105 

to organize a code of defense. It will affirm the value of moral 
relations, possible only on the footing of friendship. It will 
point again to the fact that coalescence, social harmony, is the 
birthright of the mind, and that our real good as reflective be- 
ings can spring alone from the mutual discharge of duty. It 
will analyze to the minutest point the causes leading to the in- 
fliction of wrong, and devise methods by which they can be 
either averted or mitigated in effect. When these things are done 
the heat of anger shall have been quenched, at least in part, and 
the moral equilibrium in part restored, and we shall have been 
taught the office of patience as a sufficient answer to the defiance 
and disesteem of the world. S3 

So much for the triumph of reason among neighbors. No 
less impressive is its triumph in the sphere of citizenship. When 
men yielded to the State their right to redress private injuries, 
they gave up also by implication a right to pass judgment on 
another's conduct. 84 Judgment can be adequately framed when 
the interests of all are taken into account, that is to say, when 
the peace of the body politic is safeguarded. The intent of 
requital for wrong is not recrimination, and should not be at- 
tended by a feeling of indignation. Right and wrong, justice 
and injustice do not exist as guiding concepts in a state of 
nature; for, as we have seen, relationships such as owner and 
goods are entirely foreign to its experience. They enter when 
by common consent rights and privileges are delegated to par- 
ticular persons. It would be meaningless to punish an organic 
being as a responsible agent before the basis of his responsibility 
has been laid. That would be an attempt to ruin' him simply 
out of instinctive opposition, without vindicating in the least 
the new principle of organization which the impulse of reflec- 
tion has set in motion. Penal action is not retributive but cura- 
tive. It aims to preserve the harmony of the social units and 
to provide a field for the proper working out of ethical prob- 
lems. It argues that when men enter a moral society they re- 
ceive a guarantee of safe conduct so long as they comply with 
the terms of the compact, and that when they have violated its 

83 V, io, :Sch.; IV, App. 14. "IV, App. 24. 



106 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

terms they have by that act made it more difficult for other citi- 
zens to fulfil their part of the agreement. Hence, the public 
welfare compels the state to exact reprisal by distraint or physi- 
cal disability. If law and its sanctions be not administered, social 
coalescence fails and the foundations of the State crumble 
away. 85 

The general rule just enunciated is illustrated in the attitude 
of the moral agent towards the matter of honesty. Is not a man 
justified in resorting to deceit for the sake of defending himself 
against injury? Does not the most elementary conation demand 
that by hook or crook the menacing enemy should be circum- 
vented? The answer must be found in the distinctive purpose 
governing the development of the race. What reflection pre- 
scribes for one unit it prescribes for all. If deception be a 
perfectly moral implement in an individual case, it must by 
virtue of mental consanguinity be fitted to the conduct of man- 
kind in general. But in that event no one would feel himself 
under obligation to this or any other law, and the whole sys- 
tem of carefully developed jurisprudence would be null and void. 
Just as soon as we understand that such an issue contradicts 
both the meaning of the reflective impulse and the actual practice 
of history the absurdity of deceit as an instrument of self- 
defense is convincingly apparent. 86 We are forced to be honest 
in order to preserve the equilibrium of society and secure our 
own welfare, — so fully do the moral canons which have guided 
the upward trend of civilization take their color from the rela- 
tion of private interests to the common good. 

The destiny of man being social in its values, his freedom 
can be attained only under the spell of ethical interaction. If 
commerce with irrational creatures fails to call out the deeper 
motives of the self, equally unavailing is a man's communion 
with himself. For complete freedom of thought cannot be real- 
ized so long as he declines to throw into the scale every penny- 
weight of power which his unique purpose affords him. To 
dwell in solitude away from the haunts of men, so far from 
enlarging his independence, in reality shuts him off from the 
80 IV, 37, Sch. ii; Si. 86 IV, 72. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 107 

very forces which can satisfy the needs of his nature. 87 In the 
last analysis, then, to live untrammeled by the restraints of 
traditionary law is not an evidence of freedom. The average 
citizen is right in dealing harshly with one who slights or scorn- 
fully rejects the received customs of society. These have been 
created by the determined push of the reflective instinct, questing 
after an ever freer atmosphere for its inspirations. 88 Selfhood 
comes to its surest privilege under the favoring stimulus of 
social organization. It must be burdened with duties in order 
to broaden its scope of activity. The more serious responsi- 
bilities it assumes, the greater is its degree of freedom. There- 
fore to possess the "general rights of citizenship" is the am- 
bition of the freedom-seeking soul. 89 

Nevertheless, in responding to social stimulus one may be as 
discriminating as in his organic reactions, — even more so. Free- 
dom does not demand universal assumption of ethical relations. 
Indeed, the choice we make of personal obligation will frequently 
denote the type of freedom reached. Thus, the wise man may 
decline to accept favors from one ruled by appetite, on the 
ground that the standard of judgment is different. Reason 
does not reckon human intercourse as a field for barter and ex- 
change. We do not bestow a benefit for the sake of receiving an 
exact recompense in kind. Impulse on the other hand regards 
it as a hardship when its advances are otherwise estimated than 
in its two terms. The result is disappointment and revenge. 
To avoid such a contretemps reflection bids us use our freedom 
in choosing whom we shall meet in intimate moral relations, 
with the reservation that when associated with those whose 
nature is averse from our own, and forced to accept a favor, 
we should match their offers with equal service, never giving 
them a chance to dispute our motive or suspect a note of con- 
tempt in our behavior-. 90 

The freedom caught in such ethical snatches finds its fulfill- 
ment in the social harmony, where men live in exclusive obe- 
dience to the laws of reason and each man is in fact his brother's 
keeper. 91 

87 IV, 35, Sch. * IV, 73- " IV, 35, Cor. i ; 46, Sch. 

88 Cf. IV, App. 14. "IV, 70, 71. 



10S JAMES H. DUNHAM 



III 



The dialectic of self-realization is not satisfied by man's re- 
flective interpretation of private reaction or his absorption in 
the common consciousness of his kind. These two experiences, 
varied and engrossing as they are, yet in each analysis deal with 
particular objects, whose relations to him are always determined 
by the categories of logical thought. We catch the idea of self- 
hood through the unceasing correlating movements of the mind. 
This percept, that percept, this feeling, that feeling,' — units of 
consciousness, — follow one another so closely, and are by in- 
stinct so concisely compared, that without initiation on the part 
of the thinker the picture of a self emerges. Then, brought in 
contact with similar minds, a new type of image is generated, 
new trains of thought are started. Springs of action heretofore 
untapped send forth their gleaming emotions. Man was not 
made to dwell alone. He must speak with a fellowman and 
through the avenues of friendship construct the laws of ethical 
restraint, which in the end shall refine his character and incite 
him to noble deeds. The reflective impulse as we have thus 
far studied it guarantees all this to its holders. But it guar- 
antees more, much more; it opens a new continent of observa- 
tion. Reflection, we said, operates first in the field of psychology, 
secondly in the field of ethics. Now we advance one step further 
and describe the ultima thule of human endeavor. The impulse 
becomes religious, and when it has been duly developed the 
dialectic of self is satisfied. 

We should note at the outset that religion in Spinoza's opinion 
is not an interloper, masquerading under the guise of human 
desire. To construe its terms, as many have done, as childish 
reactions to nature's portents, as elaboratae figments of poetic 
fancy, as political machinery for the suppression of popular 
revolt, or in the latest form as the product of age-long develop- 
ment in certain nerve-tracts of the brain, would be from his 
point of view merely clever examples of petitio principii. Re- 
ligion stands on the same platform as moral obligation. If men 
Jby virtue of their unique purpose are constrained to associate 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 109 

themselves in the interchange of thought, just as truly are they 
bound to entertain the idea of wider relations, such as the term 
Religion connotes. 92 To follow a religious mode of life one 
does not need to wait upon the high moments of inspiration, 
when he fully understands the values of the world-consciousness. 
Religious feeling of a rudimentary sort, yet a true child of 
natural impulse, controls even the lowest rounds of racial be- 
havior. Even when civilization has enlightened the horizon of 
scientific inquiry, but kept theological dogma crude and merce- 
nary, this offshoot of reflection remains vigorous and compelling. 
The explanation is not far to seek. Since private interest is and 
must be the "first foundation of virtue and the rule of right 
living," anything that conduces to that end cannot be left on 
one side. Plainly among the most constructive qualities of the 
human mind none is more insistent in its claim to primacy than 
broadmindedness. 93 The nearer evidences of so high a trait 
are found in the strictly empirical phenomena of sobriety and 
presence of mind in the face of danger. 94 But there are finer 
examples of it, not to be reckoned in terms of physical reaction. 
They may be paralleled by the edicts of civil manhood, which bid 
us bear with equanimity the social wrongs we cannot cure. If 
we, like other individuals, are imbedded in the solid fabric of 
nature and cannot act without her call, shall we mope and moan 
amid circumstances that the momentary complex of ideas pro- 
claims as contrary to our best interests? Shall we not rather as 
reflective beings, understanding the irreversible necessity of 
every event, accept our lot without complaint and steel the mind 
to persist in such acquiescence? 95 To this frame of thought 
the Stoics approached, and certainly we cannot refrain from 
regarding their conduct as guided by the religious instincts of 
the race. 96 The conclusion is again pressed home that man can 
"neither be nor be conceived" without the faculty of entering 
into an appreciation of the highest good. 97 Religious aspira- 
tions are common to all men. 

92 IV, 37, Sch. i. 95 IV, App. 32. 

93 Animositas. V, 41 and Sch. 9e Cf. V, Pref. 

94 III, 59, Sch. 97 IV, 36, Sch. 



no JAMES H. DUNHAM 

Still another fact confronts the careful student. If religion 
and the ethical sense issue from the same impulse, there must be 
some intimate interaction between them. They cannot be se- 
questered in wholly unrelated compartments of thought. They 
belong to an organic Self whose every expression embodies the 
feeling of the entire system. 98 It is an axiom of the history of 
religious creeds that each new faith is still-born except as it has 
the capacity of projecting its tenets into the common life of the 
people. The milieu of religion is not individual conviction but 
the social exchange. It follows that the religious impulse, being 
supreme in the counsels of selfhood, cannot fail to exert a com- 
manding influence over moral conduct. Private interests, we 
found, were practically subserved by seeking for others the same 
good which we crave for ourselves. Interpret private interests 
in the light of a religious ideal, and we expand indefinitely their 
values. But while we increase the compass of our own good, 
we cannot exclude our neighbor from sharing in the same ad- 
vance. In order therefore to realize the newly conceived indi- 
vidual good we must put forth larger exertion for the benefit of 
the social whole. Each step in the understanding of the religious 
ideal makes a man more acutely sensitive to his ethical obliga- 
tion." How shall we frame a more authentic test of the purity 
of religious progress than by examining the state of morals in 
any community where the ideal has been intelligently adopted? 
For example, every act that carries in its train the elements of 
pain, is contrary to justice as organized in civil law, and to the 
higher instincts of religion. 100 Now if the social tendency be 
to recompense hate with hate, we not only prove how little we 
understand the nature of duty, but also how completely we have 
misconceived the salient facts of the universe. True virtue can 
only be maintained by repeating in human conduct the harmony 
of nature. What unreflective men have called disorder and in- 
justice in the operation of her laws is now seen to have issued 
from their confused or fragmentary view of events. 101 Nature 
is ruled by unbending necessity; it has no hate or revenge. If 

9 ' Cf. IV, 60. 10 ° IV, App. 24. 

"IV, 37, Dem. 101 IV, 73, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE in 

religion be allowed to have her way in the ethical development 
of the race, she will prescribe love and brotherhood and a just 
regard for another's rights. 102 Her ministry is remarkably effi- 
cacious; for those who are the beneficiaries of love, especially 
of the sort prompted by religious intelligence, find a new joy in 
living, a new appreciation of the fibre of manhood, that sinks 
the impulse of resentment in the resolve to do good. It cannot 
be denied that the type and mode of execution of the religious 
ideal are authoritative gauges of the race's moral character. If 
religion does nothing else, it guarantees to every man freedom 
deliberately to cancel the common response to threat and abuse, 
and make return of good for evil. No greater evidence of the 
autonomy of self can be desired. 103 

Having determined the universal validity of reflection's high- 
est impulse, we next seek acquaintance with its terms. Towards 
what does this drive carry us ? Reflective effort begins with the 
commonest data of perception, but it does not stop there. It 
continues its correlating office in the vicinage of contending 
minds; but here too its aims are not finally realized. There is a 
province of human experience as yet untouched, one too that 
lies altogther beyond the pale of animal simulation. For while 
the higher organism may take pleasure in the presence of its 
kind, may suffer from what looks like nostalgic depression when 
a mate is removed, may even recognize some signs of communi- 
cation and fashion a code of subhuman ethics, there is not a 
scintilla of evidence to suggest that the dog or horse feels him- 
self bowed in awe before the mystery of cosmic power. In this 
domain man dwells alone, serenely alone. He cannot share his 
secret intimations , with the brute; he cannot at times express 
the strange exhilaration to his most appreciative neighbor. 
Religion, as no other function of the reflective impulse, proves 
that man's purposed unique, and that however closely his other 
actions resemble the reactional processes of lower organisms, 
when we reach the stage of broadest sweep the conceptual powers 
of the human mind are no longer susceptible of imitation. For 

102 IV, App. 15 ; V. 20. 103 IV. 46, Sch. 



H2 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

it is essential to the program of religion that we enter the highest 
field of knowledge which we are capable of investigating. 104 
This will not imply that we must cover every detail of scientific 
procedure. Only infinite intelligence could do that, and infinite 
intelligence is by hypothesis the limiting concept toward which 
the refinement of human experience tends. Religion assumes 
that we know that God exists, but it does not assume that we 
know all the modes of divine activity. 105 

The attitude of reflection as respects the world-problem is, 
Spinoza argues, radically different from that of sense-percep- 
tion. Let us take the first of the infinite attributes, viz., Exten- 
sion. How does the eye or the hand regard Matter? Not as 
infinite, for their sensuous reach is extremely limited; not as 
indivisible, for the. parts fall into analyzable bits before the 
simplest experiment of chemistry; nor yet as permarent, for 
vapor may be condensed into water, and water into solid, all 
material elements being subject to the rules of genesis and disso- 
lution. If this were the end of our inquiry, the place of religion 
would be entirely vacated. Reflection however enters, and shows 
that though one element may change into another there is no 
resultant loss; that when chemical units are compounded they 
invariably assume a fixed relation; and that each event in the 
purview of perception is tied back to another, and that to still 
another, until an infinite series is set in motion, passing by 
assumption the grasp of a single mind. Thus are we drawn 
away from the contemplation of the broken arcs to the appre- 
hension of the spheric round. God, the unchangeable Substance, 
engages the religious impulse as its proper end-in-view. 106 

No less emphatic is the mind's rapprochement towards the 
second of the divine attributes. Thought, or consciousness, we 
have already discovered, is another aspect of tangible matter. 107 
The behavior of a biological organism is interpreted through the 
function which its primary or secondary impulses perform. In 
the case of man, when a wholly new purpose appears the office 
of consciousness becomes exceedingly complex, and at times 

104 IV, 28, Dem. loa I, 15, Sch. 

1(e lV, App. 4. 1OT Sup. pg. 43- 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 113 

baffles understanding. Nevertheless, we are persuaded that its 
business is to express the activity of the organic life by means 
of a self-discriminating personality. When we leave the level 
of "finite modes" may we carry with us the same principle of 
coordination? Is it true that the universe possesses a conscious- 
ness, which infallibly interprets the minutest facts of physics and 
chemistry ? Spinoza argues for this position. He holds that we 
"must explain the order of the whole of nature or the whole 
chain, of causes through the attribute of thought only." 108 God 
is not alone extended Substance; he is a thinking Thing. 109 
Granting this, we are not merely permitted, we are obliged to 
examine the total meaning of nature. This impetus for exami- 
nation stirs within us in the guise of religion. It must be 
strictly differentiated from the common habit of thought, that 
appoints for each natural event a specific end. Thus, men are 
constantly saying that Nature has blundered or left her work 
undone, — because she has not measured her act by their pre- 
conceived types. Her duty, they affirm, is to adapt every physi- 
cal law or organic process to the good of humanity, man being 
her choicest product. 

The mistake, which is a familiar one, lies in considering each 
phenomenon in its individual relations and apart from the or- 
ganization of the whole. God does not act for this or that 
private end — he does not act for an end as such, a thing pre- 
cedently conceived, but as yet unrealized. Nature exists because 
it exists, and acts because it acts. 110 The doctrine of finality is 
without meaning here, for Nature does not admit of imperfec- 
tions. Rather is she steadily and with increasing clearness re- 
vealing her glorious perfections to intelligent observers, tying 
both scientific laws and the single events illustrating them back to 
the unbending mechanism of her system. 111 Hence, the quest 
of the religious impulse is for a view of the world from whose 
contour the incidents of defect are being progressively elimi- 
nated. That the quest should not be vain may be gathered from 
the fundamental nature of man. For his mind can have a pre- 

108 II, 7, Sch. 110 I, 11. 

109 II, 1. m Cf. II, 5- 



H4 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

cise knowledge of reality, — its own actions, its body, the en- 
vironing objects, all part and parcel of the divine Substance. 112 
If we accepted as guides only ideas that could be verified by 
facts, we should soon exclude pain as a human experience, and 
understanding perfectly the ways of Nature move with uninter- 
cepted freedom amid the varied combinations of her forces. 113 
Indeed, if the reflective powers had been fully developed at the 
start, we should have had no knowledge of good and evil, but 
a continuous rapport with the necessary order of the world. The 
career of humanity, however, proves that its potential capacity 
has never been completely unfolded except in the limiting con- 
cept. There have been temporary snatches of lucid thought, as 
in the faith of the Patriarchs and in the spirit of Christ, but the 
great majority of mankind have sold their religious birthright 
for the grossest gratifications of sense. 114 They have trodden 
the sodden path of the beast, when they might have contributed 
to the framing of an ethical standard whose terms would have 
spelt social ■ happiness. In short, instead of emphasizing the 
eternal "something" which makes man divine, they have been 
content to esteem the fragmentary sketches of nature as of 
primary value and let the vast program of causality pass by un- 
noticed. 115 Only when it is too late do narrow minds realize 
how futile it is for a man to put himself in a mood indifferent 
or antagonistic to natural force. We conquer solely by 
compliance. 116 

The goal of the religious impulse being definitely sighted, 
how, it is asked, shall we organize it into the practical experience 
of the Self ? It cannot be done by forming a general notion, in 
the same way that we frame the ideas of humanity, justice, 
necessity, etc. For though such notions are fixed in the mind 
as objective facts, they are in common usage inevitably cast in 
the mold of a sensuous image. Nor can transcendental ideas 
like Being, Thing, etc., escape the same alignment. Thus, the 
highest concept of the mind, viz., God, has its empirical associ- 
ations in some natural object or artificial device from which we 

132 II, 47, Dem. U4 IV, 68 and Sch. "« V, 18. 

113 IV, 64. 115 V, 23. 



FREED OM AND P URP OSE 1 1 5 

have drawn or into which we have injected certain controlling- 
properties. Such a method is a prolific source of error; for 
there is an unbridged chasm between the idea at the base of the 
religious impulse and the myriad-faced forms by which men 
try to express it. There is no greater correspondence between 
them than between the true computation of figures in the sub- 
liminal consciousness and the mistaken results as worked out on 
paper. 117 The application of the logical categories helps enor- 
mously to dissipate the crude and inept conceptions of divine 
nature, especially by holding before the mind the principle of 
causality. 11S Moreover, the correct habits of religion can only 
be formed by training the mind to observe the universal rela- 
tions of every experience. Just as true science can not be built 
upon scattered observations, with no common connecting thread 
of law, so true religion is not satisfied unless impressions of 
divine exertion can be submitted to a proper and adequate test. 
Science is the vestibule to spiritual faith. 119 

Nevertheless, science is not religion and must not be substi- 
tuted for it. By virtue of its place in the organization of the 
self the religious impulse demands a mode of functioning dif- 
ferent from the earlier phases of reflection. 120 Religion is dis- 
tinctly an immediate experience. It excludes the scientific 
formulas that embrace all things under general principles. It 
isolates a particular object and considers it as free, that is, as 
existing by the necessity of its own nature and as determining 
its own action. 121 Nor is such an attitude without good support. 
For reality is embodied in every reaction, and reality is but an- 
other name for God. Hence religion does not ask, as science 
does, for an elaborate array of empirical data upon the basis of 
which an adequate conclusion can be made. Religion takes an 
individual fact, and by understanding it understands universal 
Nature. 122 Let us study the meaning of a familiar instinct, e.g., 
the sex impulse.^ Viewed simply as a function of body it re- 
sponds to its proper stimulus in the same fashion as any other 

™ II, ,Sch. i ; 47, Sch. W V, 28. ** V, 5; I, Def. vii. 

118 II, 42, Cor. ii. "V, 36, Sch. ^V, 24, 



n6 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

typical impulse. 123 When it becomes the subject of rational 
discipline the end-in-view is proportionately broadened. The 
interests of society at large are now consulted. Instead of being 
an instrument for personal gratification the sex impulse turns 
its attention to the generation of healthy offspring, and the train- 
ing of childhood in the art of living. 124 The good which a man 
covets for himself, viz., Life, he also covets for others, and he 
will endeavor not only to discharge his own duty in an honorable 
way but also to influence other men to the same sort of action. 125 

Furthermore, the implications of sex are not exhausted when 
we have fulfilled its natural offices. They are wider in scope; 
they possess profoundly spiritual values. The fact is unequivo- 
cally affirmed that every reaction, no matter how obscure, carries 
with it a complete Weltanschauung. It requires only the due 
exercise of reflective thought in order to disclose the cosmic 
elements in the simplest facts of experience. 126 Thus, in the 
appetite under consideration the specific organs involved become 
the symbols of universal fertility. Ethnic religions have seized 
upon their functions as evidence of the presence of superhuman 
power in the world. Hence, mythologic allegories like that of 
Leda and the swan, phallic rites, official prostitution attest the 
crude but natural quest for life. In the higher faiths the same 
symbols are employed, divested of course of their physical ap- 
purtenances and guaranteeing to their votaries unqualified "free- 
dom of soul." 127 By a process of metaphoric change generation 
is superseded by re-generation, the female principle becomes the 
medium for the introduction of mystic vitality, while the parental 
instinct is lost in the gracious splendor of a divine Fatherhood. 

The principle of organicity which we have just illustrated 
first comes to view in the action of a living body. There we are 
not at liberty to assume a local function of worth to itself alone. 
The organism is thoroughly articulated. Its appetites conform 
to the good of the whole and can be understood solely through 
its terms. 128 Every organ may be appraised as the body in parvo. 

123 III, 57, Sch. "V, 14; cf. Intel. Emend, pg. 6. 

134 IV, App. 20. m Cf. IV, App. 20. 

335 III, 6; IV, 35, Cor. i; 37- "IV, 00. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 117 

That is to say, the body's general purpose is crystallized in the 
duty of a particular impulse, — a Konsentrirung, as Fichte would 
say. 129 More impressive still is the organical character of the 
self. It is an axiom of life that no man can preserve his cor- 
porate integrity for the sake of another object. 130 In the re- 
flective valuation of experience no higher action can claim ac- 
ceptance, for the reason that if another purpose alien to the sub- 
ject's welfare should be introduced it would disturb the course 
of his development, and we should be unable to interpret the 
act by the conscious purpose of the whole. Whatever events in 
any life appear to be contrary to the general trend assume that 
aspect, in all probability, because we are not in position to de- 
tect or properly assess the value of every element entering into 
the system of the particular Self. Analyzed to its core, the 
most insignificant gesture of body will eventually reveal the 
stamp of personal character, the degree of self-unfolding, which 
the agent has attained. The mind is the formal cause of all 
reactions, and hence mirrors itself in the common facts of life. 131 
Still a third phase of teleological concentration on a broader 
plane is the constitution of human society. Here the particular 
self is reflected in the collective movements of mankind. Here 
a man may project himself fully upon the minds of his fellows 
without fearing to encounter a single trait of character that he 
himself cannot in some measure duplicate. If the structure of 
social life were not organic the principles of jurisprudence would 
be entirely without effect; for example, the punishment of an 
offender derives its force from the fact that the united will of 
society expresses itself concretely against any infraction of its 
rules. By reason of this give-and-take relation, — the individual 
to the State and the State to its obscurest citizen, — it is possible 
to make an example of some notorious misdemeanant, the 
majesty of common law finding its vindication in his person. 132 
It is competent, therefore, without weaving the web of legal 
analytics, to advance at a leap from the validity of retributive 
justice in one instance to its validity in the whole scheme of 

129 Cf. Wissensschaftslehre, 1801, Sec. 37. 

130 IV, 25. *V, 31. 1S2 IV, 37, Sch. ii. 



n8 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

juridical administration. The principle of organicity is abun- 
dantly verified in the transactions of social life. 

But when we reach the supreme level of human intelligence, 
where the religious impulse makes itself felt, does the same 
principle hold good? Does the illustration already adduced rest 
upon a secure foundation? Is it a fact that by a process called 
Intuition the mind can pass anf ainem Blicke from the recogni- 
tion of reality in a given object to the complete understanding of 
what it means to the whole world of reality? 133 The thing we 
are most deeply interested in is the Self, whose career we are 
building. The self as body is embedded in the order of Nature 
and of necessity obeys her will implicitly. The Self as conscious 
mind is not dependent on place or time. Hence, scientific in- 
quiry has not been forced to wait for an empirical touch with all 
the myriad courses of the stellar world, ere its eternal secrets 
were divulged; such a monumental deduction as the principle 
of gravitation sprang from the study of inconsiderable data. 
Still, even here certain categories of logic, such as uniformity, 
Avere applied, in order to reach the end. In intuitive knowledge, 
on the other hand, the self goes directly beyond experience, and 
opens converse, so to say, with the universe as a whole. It be- 
gins to see that its mode of action is emblematic of the move- 
ments of nature. For as selfhood in man is the teleological 
equivalent of the marvellously varied and intricate reactions of 
body, so the divine Self — "God's power of thinking" — proves to 
be the teleological aspect of "his realized power of acting." 134 
And as man's body follows inevitably the path prescribed by 
natural law, so man's mind, his personal Self, being organically 
associated with the world of consciousness, 135 must register the 
universal meaning of the mechanical order. 13(5 

How far religious insight carries the mind beyond the pale of 
conceptual thinking may be judged by its attitude towards the 
idea of death. What is death? Death, says reflection, is the 

183 V, 25. 1M II, 7, Cor. 

135 II, 13,'Sch.; V, 3 o, 36. 

138 Cf. Joachim's view of teleology in Spinoza's philosophy, "A Study of 
Spinoza's Ethics," p. 232. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 119 

result of the joint action of certain chemico-physical forces, con- 
spiring within the confines of a given organism. Death comes 
to all — none may escape. It is a standing proof of the inexor- 
able execution of the canon of causality. The duty of the re- 
flective observer is to absorb whatever pain emerges, — sorrow, 
fear, decline of personal initiative, — in a serene contemplation 
of the infallibility of natural law. But the "hurt of death" is 
not abolished by a skilful use of logic. It is deeper than argu- 
ment; it is seated in the heart of human hope. We may miti- 
gate its terrors by tracing its causes, but we cannot remove its 
sting. A higher office than rational persuasion is needed here. 
Spinoza finds its terms in the intuitions of religion. Death is 
not death, as we commonly esteem it. Death is the gateway to 
life. The plant droops, dies, and is disorganized; but its parts, 
scattered to the winds, become the fructifying forces in higher 
grades of life. The animal perishes at the stroke of man's blade; 
but its flesh once digested furnishes bone and sinew, strength 
of arm and vigor of brain. The man dies, his body separates 
into its elemental units; his mind redolent of piquant thoughts 
is silent, unheard. Is that all? Have his mighty loves, his 
superb ideals, his compelling purposes vanished ? For this world, 
as an entity he is dead, but as a spiritual power, in contemporary 
affairs or among generations unborn no death of body can abro- 
gate his right to live. Death viewed from its teleological im- 
plications is not itself an end, it is the means for attaining the 
ultimate end of all things, that is, Life. 137 

The precepts of religion so cogent in this familiar connection 
may be worked out in respect to every reaction which leaves 
upon us the impression of pain. 138 They prove themselves to 
be more powerful than the abstract terms of reason, because 
we are conscious, as already pointed out, of a perfect corre- 
spondence between our possible selves and the universal self. 139 
They prepare us, asTogical categories cannot, for an approxima- 
tion to the personal freedom, where sense and the recollection 
of sensory images shall count as little as possible in the forming 

137 Cf. V, 31, Sch, 42, Sell. ™V, 36, Sch. 

138 V, 38. 



120 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

of judgment. Hence, every time we have accepted one of re- 
ligion's counsels we have come that much nearer to the true 
self which we are striving to evolve, — "the chief part of the 
mind, which is eternal." 140 If man could reach the terminus of 
the infinitely repeated dialectic, he would cease to be man, he 
would become God. 141 But since that is only an intellectual 
concept, his business plainly is to fit every private reaction into 
the organic scheme of the world, learning especially that events 
fraught, in his view, with evil consequences, are at root sym- 
bolic of some universal principle, the understanding of which 
will perceptibly lighten his way. 

It will be noticed that in discussing the religious impulse we 
have been able to distinguish the very elements which are integral 
to the meaning of a common reaction. Thus, we have first 
sought the end or purpose of the instinct, next the means of 
stimulating causes by which it functions, and finally the certain 
satisfactions issuing from every discharge of natural power. 
The parallel is not accidental; it is involved in the structure of 
the mind. That a feeling of pleasure sweeps over the body 
when hunger is appeased, or a beautiful object greets the eye, 
or very emphatically when a long-coveted treasure is secured, 
the most rudimentary experience can testify. Pleasure is a 
moment in psychic action, quite different from the original 
impulse or the physiological changes due to contact with en- 
vironment. It calculates the successive values of consciousness, 
how we felt before and after the reaction took place. It cannot 
therefore be an enduring fact in the emotional life, except insofar 
as we may desire to keep a strict account of functional dis- 
charges for purposes of critical study. For directly it has af- 
firmed the operation of one impulse, another begins to function, 
and its corresponding gratifications demand the same attention 
from the mind. 142 The evanescent character of physical pleasure 
will appear if we compare the first glow of appreciation conse- 
quent upon — let us say — the astronomer's discovery of a new 
planet, with the gradually receding warmth in each recollection 

140 V, 39. 142 III, Def. JEmot. iii, Explic. 

141 V, 40, Sch. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 121 

thereof. Organic chemistry has no instruments for measuring 
the change in cellular tissue or the rapid acceleration in the blood 
circulation under the primary strain. It will be still more help- 
less when the steady abatement of feeling is contrasted with 
the satisfactions of mind, which grow stronger with every con- 
templation of the facts. 

There will thus be foreshadowed a state of mind where bodily 
behavior is reduced to its minimum values, a state manifestly 
approached when the mind reacts not to particular objects, but 
to the totality of possible objects conceived as simultaneous 
stimuli, that is, to the idea of the world itself. 143 Here the 
pleasure-giving response attends the comprehension of a prin- 
ciple starting with a single event in the career, but leading out 
thence into the meaning of universal existence. The act is an 
act of reflection, and its effect upon the agent must be distinctly 
in the sphere of intellect, not of sense. 144 If now we steadily 
reduce the play of emotion, we shall at length reach, in concept 
if not in reality, the form of a Being stripped of passion, with- 
out pleasure, without pain, unable to pass from one perfection to 
another, knowing neither love nor hate as we know them, the 
apotheosis of reflection, pure intellect. 145 But in the mean time, 
— and this is the serious matter for us humans, — we may de- 
termine to a nicety how far we have advanced in the development 
of selfhood by the amount of satisfaction derived from religious 
thought, as compared with our interest in purely sensory ex- 
perience. 146 We shall determine, too, what types of religious 
practice yield the most gratifying returns, whether those which 
appeal to the aesthetic taste, or those which go down into the 
philosophy of the world-scheme. The latter cannot fail to im- 
press the mind as the superlative tests of religion. Be their 
appreciation by us "great or small, the fact that we have actually 
employed their terms proves that we have attained a degree of 
freedom inestimably beyond the highest responsibilities of ethi- 
cal intercourse, as the divine is beyond the human. 147 

But religion does more than refine emotional interests by 



-iV. 



v, 14. 145 v, 17. 147 cy. v, 36, Sch. 

V, 32, Cor. 14e V, 40, Cor. 



122 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

withdrawing them from sensuous contact; it brings out more 
clearly the intimate qualities of each. Love cannot be restricted 
to the mind's reaction upon objects of sense. When so under- 
stood, love is an involuntary motion of body, interpreted by 
the mind as pleasure accompanied by the image of an external 
cause. 14S As an ethical emotion love obeys a similar law, though 
now the reason why we should join in an harmonious inter- 
change of thought becomes evident. Men have the same nature 
and the same goal. Yet love to one's fellowman is rarely if 
ever efficacious, except it be visited upon a known individual. 
Society as such, the social consciousness in its uncounted units, 
is not the fit object of a man's affection. Moral duty is direct, 
not pervasive. The religious impulse, however, gives rise to a 
new type of love. It cannot be limited to a single experience, 
for as soon as the mind responds thereto, instantly a whole 
vista of universal implications is opened up. Love that began 
in common fashion is suddenly transformed into a ramifying 
intellectual power. 149 The warmth of this power ofttimes over- 
flows into the channels of sensibility, as e.g., when the face of 
the mystic takes on a rapt expression the moment his soul has 
caught sight of supernal glory. But obviously the momentary 
elation is something more than the coalescence of certain con- 
current feelings. For while we might make a sum of all possi- 
ble gratifications attending the discharge of normal impulses, we 
should yet need to take into account the correlating activity of 
mind, which has united one and all under the rubric of a self. 150 
It is apparent, then, that religion is not a meaningful concep- 
tion, save as we see in man the concrete personality, the free and 
energetic agent, not interested primarily in reactions as physical 
facts, but bent on embedding them in the structure of his un- 
folding personal life. 151 Man therefore identifies himself with 
the natural order of the world. He lives no longer in unreasoned 
contact with his environment; he can no longer be content with 
its cursory pleasures. His loves once resting on specific forms 
now by reflective thought embrace the essence of the whole. 152 

145 III, Def. Emots. vi. 150 V, 16. 

149 V, 15. 151 V, 27. 153 V, 32 and Cor. 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 123 

If the self with its loves could be infinitely magnified, so that 
the images of particular objects were entirely excluded, we 
should reach the idea of absolute Being, whose emotion — using 
still the familiar term — would be of the intellect alone. It fol- 
lows from this that the richer the content of religious feeling, 
and the more varied the interests of private and public life af- 
fected, the more will the divine elements of selfhood be brought 
into play. Perfect love, complete acquiescence of spirit, remains 
an ideal never to be actualized, a concept which we identify with 
the divine consciousness. 153 

Two practical assurances hinge upon the idea of love instilled 
by religion. In the first place, our theory of divine providence 
will be profoundly changed. Just as long as we continue to 
ascribe conflicting emotions or varying moods to the heart of 
Nature we shall find our religious attitude full of grave diffi- 
culties. How can God, whose breath is in the nostrils of all 
flesh, be forced to shower his benefactions on one man to the 
exclusion of others? Or what bribes shall a devotee offer suffi- 
cient in worth to affect the serenity of sovereign judgment? 
Again, what manner of distribution of natural forces shall a 
man conceive to be so inimical to his private interests as to 
persuade him that Deity has pursued a policy of resentment 
against him personally? The principle of reflective love proves 
his strictures to be without foundation. For none of them, 
when properly assessed, can satisfy either the logic or aspiration 
of his mind. Man craves for equanimity; he seeks for the elimi- 
nation of mental distress. Pessimism, whose taint is in the 
foregoing queries, has always issued in counsels of despair, 
suicide crowning the soul's defeat. 154 On the other hand, the 
mind in its saner moods has sought for concepts which invest it 
with the atmosphere of certitude. Now since the highest con- 
cept the mind can entertain is the perfection of God, 155 it be- 
hooves us to reorganize our religious dogmatics by the excision 
of all childish and mercenary notions, substituting for them the 
principle of judgment which the religious impulse has taught us 

153 V, 35, 36 and Sch. 1M IV, 18. 153 II, 46, 47- 



124 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

in common experience. 136 For if we permit any fancy no mat- 
ter how ingenious to divert the current of religious feeling, 
falsehood of a most serious kind will follow in its train, error 
big enough to arrest the growth of character and pauperize the 
moral sense. 157 

The second maxim of religion comes in sight at this point. 
Fervor of mind generated by contact with the world conscious- 
ness refuses to be defaced by the faults of social intercourse. 
One of man's besetting sins is jealousy, a strange mingling of 
love and hate, — first, consuming devotion to a beloved object 
and aversion toward our rival, then the displacement of love and 
the rise of scorn and condemnation. This is the bent of nature, 
and its inexorable reward is pain. 15S Can ethics by its brawniest 
effort crush the insidious destroyer? It has argued that retalia- 
tion is suicidal. Are not the interests of each so closely inter- 
twined with the interests of all that if one be hurt the body 
politic, and not least he who gave the affront, suffers accord- 
ingly? If for no other reason than for self-preservation, the 
dictates of morality should be observed. But obviously in the 
final account the compulsion of the social ideal is extremely 
weak. Highly organized civilizations, faced by extraordinary 
situations, have torn up their sensitized moral code and cast its 
fragments to the winds. Logic has wrought many wonders in 
public life, but it has never yet polarized human impulses about 
the idea of what the good of the world demands. Spinoza, liv- 
ing amid the political embroilments of the seventeenth century, 
knew how desperately faint the call of justice was. Not theory 
alone but the issue of events turned him to a higher principle. 
Religion, the "knowledge of God," is the one safe anchor for 
the struggling fleet of human desires. The degree of a man's 
love for his neighbor will be determined, and determined solely, 
by the ripeness of his religious experience. 159 To statesmen, 
who build civic prestige upon military establishments and hold 
that religion should be officially appointed because liberty of 
thought engenders fantastic ideas, tending to weaken the spirit 

156 v, 18, 19. 15S ni, 35, :sch. 

1S *V, 37, Dem. 159 IV, 37- 



FREEDOM AND PURPOSE 125 

of loyalty, such a consideration is unthinkable. Jealousies can 
be kept in leash by a single force, viz., preparedness for striking 
back. Vagaries of each and every sort yield to one remedial 
charm, physical might. But the shallow pessimism of the super- 
man argument has been exposed a hundred times. There is a 
religious instinct within the breast, and it links itself involun- 
tarily with the noblest ideals of the race. Those ideals cover a 
type of character which all may share. The fact that it is open 
to all eliminates the element of competition. No man can take 
away his neighbor's birthright, no matter how hard he try. 
Such properties are unique to the Self. Then, if there be no 
contest, there can arise no misconceptions nor any heartburns. 
The jealousies which sensuous rewards always excite, because 
just one and no more can possess the good, are entirely absent. 
Instead of bitter contention a benevolent rivalry for the expan- 
sion of virtue is engaged in, while the delight in our personal 
achievements is perceptibly heightened by the conquests of a 
multitude in the same field. The superiority of the religious 
good over those' of sense is forever established. 160 

Let us not suppose, however, that either of these maxims of 
religion can be immediately and fully verified to us. The road 
to this summit is hard and will be discovered only with the 
greatest labor. It must be hard, for its frequenters are ex- 
tremely few. It belongs to the reflective impulse to seek out 
and tread the path, be it never so persistently abandoned after 
each new success. 161 It belongs too to the same impulse to 
award to us convincing evidence of its satisfactory pursuit. 
What the form of that evidence is we have already described. 
It is manifest that even on this most exalted level of human 
experience the principle of compensation is not forgotten. If 
organic appetites yield definite pleasure, which in turn drives 
us by the appeal of the imagination to their repeated discharge, 
so religion instills within us a feeling of satisfaction, — joy that 
we have entered into the secrets of nature, the glow of surprise 
that we are really bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh. The 
difference between sensuous pleasure and religious joy lies in 

160 V, 20. 1C1 V, 42. 



126 JAMES H. DUNHAM 

their duration. The one is ephemeral; it may be repeated in- 
definitely, but at length its edge will wear off with the decay of 
bodily powers. The joy of divine communion is permanent. 
There is nothing in the realm of sense that can throw it into 
collapse. Organic instincts may lose their value because the 
organs compounding them are destroyed. This applies to every 
material element and is covered by the law of mechanism: 
"There is no individual thing, than which there is not another 
more powerful and effective." 162 But the joy of the spirit is 
not defined by the coordinates of time and place. It inhabits 
the home of the Self, and the conjunction of physical events 
cannot disturb its freedom. 163 If it depended for its vigor on 
an immediate reaction to environment, it could not survive the 
first passing flush. Its virtue is, not empirical. Rather it is 
the fruit of a different type of mental action, that which deals 
with universal and eternal principles. The feeling attending 
such thought cannot be evanescent; it must be perpetual. 164 

If, then, a man has won the first elementary article of religious 
faith, he should hold to it as a priceless treasure; it will never 
deteriorate in value nor alter in form. "Love towards God can- 
not be turned into hate." 165 This is his sure return for giving 
the religious impulse room to function,' — a beatitude of mind, a 
serenity of soul, — not the captious reward for triumph over 
sense, but the conscious condition of his triumph. In short, re- 
ligion does not offer itself to the race as the end of an ethical 
struggle; it affirms that it alone is the instrument by the use of 
which moral obligations are essentially fulfilled and the terms 
of selfhood adequately met. 166 Because it crystallizes the uni- 
versal meaning of human life, it assures to its subjects an in- 
creasing degree of freedom through a wise and affectionate 
compliance with its terms. If the religious attitude be seriously 
espoused, the last fetters of sense begin to loosen, the suffocating 
pangs of repression yield to a larger hope. Man awakes not to 
a dramatic disenthralment mediated by stranger hands, but to 
the throb of his sovereign self-consciousness. He bears the 
future in his own breast. His purpose has made him free. 

ie2 IV, Axiom. ie4 V, 33. 1W V, 42. 

1<B V, 37- *"V, 18, Cor. 



